Vũ Cao Đàm (1908-2000)

Lot 26
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Estimation :
50000 - 80000 EUR
Result with fees
Result : 220 520EUR
Vũ Cao Đàm (1908-2000)
Maternité, circa 1950 Oil on masonite, signed lower left. In its original frame, made by the artist 61 x 49.8 cm - 24 x 19 5/8 in. H. S. D. was born on 15 April 1904 in Yen Huong (Tonkin) and grew up in Indochina. He arrived in France at the beginning of the 1920s and frequented the circle of Indochinese in Paris. He opened a restaurant, the Hoan Son, which was frequented by many of his compatriots. In the 1950s, he acquired this painting Maternity of Vũ Cao Đàm and kept it all his life. The son of a scholar, immersed in the French language from an early age, Vũ Cao Đàm is a model student at the Hanoi School of Fine Arts. His diverse and innovative talent has been illustrated throughout his career through a notable stylistic evolution. If the artist began with sculpture to quickly devote himself to painting on silk, Maternité is located in a pivotal period, before his final adoption of oil on canvas. The approach to the sub - ject is more similar to his work on silk. The figurative background shows a Vietnamese landscape: the mountains in the distance are surrounded by vegetation and trees. The colorful and vivid palette is reminiscent of his later oil paintings, but the nuances of the colors and the absence of a dominant hue mark the end of the comparison. Halfway between two periods, this work takes up a theme regardless of the medium. The mother and child forming this maternity meet the Vietnamese canons. The oval faces, their ebony hair and their almond-shaped eyes recall their origin. Although depicted from the waist up, the young woman’s traditional áo dài outfit can be seen, matched with her turban. Her long neck echoes the slender silhouettes of the Italian mannerists. By choosing to portrait her bust figures in front of a distant landscape, Vũ Cao Đàm recalls the lesson of the Italian primitives. An artist of remarkable talent, Vũ Cao Đàm manages to renew a subject he has treated many times and offers here a work shared between various influences, testifying to a constant research in his stylistic evolution. 
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