Provenance:
Wally Findlay Galleries, New York.

ABOUT THE WORK

Le Pho is widely famous for his paintings of women and children, usually in a garden setting imbued with floral elements. He and his contemporaries occupy a significant connection between Eastern and Western art. He was among the first students at the Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de l’Indochine (presently the Vietnam University of Fine Arts) where a distinctive amalgamation of Oriental themes and Occidental approaches materialized in the 1920s. There, Le was trained to depict Oriental subjects and themes using French painting methods. He and his peers – To Ngoc Van, Nguyen Phan Chánh, and Vu Cao Dam, became the founders of what eventually became known as the Hanoi School that elevated the status of Vietnamese art at a time when Vietnam strictly regulated all foreign exchanges. “Le Pho’s work is composed around very fundamentally desirable human conditions: serenity, maternity, and lush natural beauty. These are almost universally desired and understood,” said Findlay Gallery director Frederick S. Clark. Furthermore, Clark added: “Importantly, Le Pho captured Vietnamese subjects in a style that crossed over Eastern and Occidental techniques. The result is a style that is desirable to Eastern and Western collectors alike.” As written in the French newspaper Nice-Matin, “Le Pho uses color to produce harmonies in his paintings that are more and more orchestrated. The women he depicts have [the] sweetness of flowers, and the flowers he depicts sing a hymn to the morning, to the springtime, and to life.” At present, Vietnamese artists owe a debt of gratitude to the triumph and legacy of Le Pho in firmly establishing the prosperity of contemporary Vietnamese art.