Lot 24: Nguyen Trung (b. 1940) Lady with Flower

Nguyen Trung (b. 1940)
Lady with Flower
2006

signed and dated 06
oil on canvas

95 by 95 cm.
37 3/8 by 37 3/8 in.
For further information on this lot please visit the website

Provenance
Private Collection, Singapore

阮忠
黃衣少女
二〇〇六年作

簽名：ng. Trung 06
油彩畫布

來源
新加坡私人收藏

Eighty-one years old and still working from his studio in Ho Chi Minh City, Nguyen Trung is today celebrated as a living national treasure. As a young man, he was one of the founding members of the Vietnamese Young Artists Association, established in 1966 and disbanded in 1975. After graduating from the Gia Dinh National School of Fine Arts in 1962, he specialised in oil painting and developed a stylistic identity that balanced tradition and modernity. His artistic journey led him to explore abstraction and figuration, with each technique expanding his proficiency in the other. His work is marked by an expressionist, symbolist and allegorical character.

As one of Vietnam's most prominent artists, Nguyen Trung was the subject of a solo exhibition in 2014 at Insights, Art Basel Hong Kong. His works are exhibited internationally in museums and galleries, including the Vietnamese National Fine Arts Museum in Hanoi, the Ho Chi Minh Fine Art Museum, the Singapore Art Museum, the Archivio Biblioteca Museo Civico in Italy, and the collection of the United Overseas Bank, Singapore.

Lady with Flower depicts a beautiful young woman as the central figure against an extensive golden-hued background painted in varying shades of ochre. She holds up in her right hand a white flower, possibly a gardenia, whose perfume fills our imagination, as well as a white silk scarf which billows out over her left shoulder. The painting is balanced and symmetrical. The negative space is dynamic as it is traversed and interrupted by the diaphanous scarf. The young woman is dressed in a bright yellow tunic, her flesh showing through the slightly transparent material. The subject's long slender limbs and torso and the dark outline of the figure are reminiscent of Modigliani's work.

Nguyen Trung painted both innocence and sensuality—the woman's character radiates a sense of purity and strength, a timeless allegory of the idealised feminine. Weathering fads and political storms, he has stayed true to his artistic vision, his work testament to his status as one of the most significant artists of his era.