Footnotes

Provenance
Collection of Marinka and John Bennett, acquired directly from the artist in Vietnam during their second stay (1972-1975).
Thence in the family by descent.
Private collection, US.

Published
Mentioned and published online in Dr Boi Tran Huynh, Vietnamese Aesthetics from 1925 Onwards, The University of Sydney, Chapter 4, p.225, fig.60.

阮忠
少女與荷花
油彩 畫布
1972年作

簽名：ng. trung 72 (左下)

來源
瑪琳卡及約翰·貝內特珍藏，於1972-1975年間其第二次在越南工作期間直接得自藝術家本人
後經家族流傳至今
美國私人收藏

線上出版
Boi Tran Huynh博士，《1925年以來的越南美學》，雪梨大學，第四章，頁225，圖60


Born in Soc Trang, Vietnam in 1940, Nguyen Trung is one of the most respected and accomplished artists in Vietnam. His career spans over six decades, marked by both the French colonial rule and the Vietnam War. During the 1960s and 1970s, Nguyen Trung was deeply involved in the art scene in Saigon.

In the early period from 1961 to 1966, Nguyen Trung began to develop his distinctive artistic language, influenced by the masters of Impressionism and Expressionism. His Romantic Realism works from this time depict ethereal women with long necks and faces reminiscent of Modigliani, the ghostly light and space of Marc Chagall, and the colours of Picasso's Blue Period.

A combination of personal and socio-political challenges led Nguyen Trung to abandon his studies at the National Fine Arts College of Saigon in 1963, the same year he won a gold medal at the Spring Painting Awards. The artist's strong disapproval of the idea that formal education would restrict his artistic freedom and creativity had a considerable impact. In 1964, Nguyen Trung was arrested in Phnom Penh while illegally crossing the border to travel to Paris to continue his artistic studies. He spent a year in jail. After this misfortune, Nguyen Trung became a prolific painter and art activist. Two notable paintings from this period, Girl at the Table, 1964 (Lot 2) and Seated Lady, circa 1965 (Lot 1), show the influence of Picasso's Blue Period.

In 1966, Nguyen Trung played a pivotal role in co-founding of the Young Saigonese Artists Association, alongside other notable artists such as Nguyen Khai, Trinh Cung, Ho Huu Thu, Nguyen Lam and others. He led the association as chairman from 1967 to 1972. This group of artists embarked on a journey to explore new artistic styles, moving away from traditional narratives and embracing Symbolism and Expressionism. Their work was deeply influenced by French culture, reflecting the long-standing artistic exchange between Vietnam and France. The artists experimented with various modernist styles, including Lyrical Abstraction, Cubism, Fauvism, and Naive Art, in an attempt to push the boundaries of their creativity. Nguyen Trung, in particular, succeeded in developing a unique artistic language that conveyed Vietnamese themes through the European medium of oil painting.

One of his works from this period, Girl and Lotus Flower, 1972 (Lot 5), shows his transition from a Picasso-like blue period, in which he painted solitary subjects, to an original image of tranquillity. He still had a preference for blue, but the earlier coarse brush strokes became transparent, soft and affirmative in his later paintings. Another beautiful example is By the Ocean, 1974 (Lot 4), which the late Dr. Boi Tran Huynh, a prominent Vietnamese art historian and curator, described in her writing as an exceptionally romantic painting portraying a young lady merging into the seascape, an image of ultimate tranquillity. Nguyen Trung painted this work while hiding as a draft dodger: 'I activated my imagination toward sky and ocean, to offset the limited space I had to comply with'. His paintings from this period have a dreamy and romantic beauty, capturing the serene and delicate nature of his subjects. This period of his career was marked by a desire to create an ideal and nationalistic style that was purely Vietnamese, free from any established foreign influence.

Nguyen Trung's dedication to his art and his ability to adapt and reinvent himself have made him a significant figure in the Vietnamese art scene. His works continue to be celebrated for their beauty, serenity and cultural significance.