Vu Cao Dam, or the poetry of memory: two unpublished works reappear from a private French collection
- Cabinet Gauchet Art Asiatique
- 3 days ago
- 6 min read
Among the great names of 20th-century Vietnamese painting, Vu Cao Dam occupies a truly unique place. A painter, sculptor, musician, and poet, the artist developed throughout his career a profoundly personal pictorial language, situated at the crossroads of Vietnamese traditions and European modernism.
Today, two previously unseen oil paintings on canvas, dated 1978 and held for over twenty years in the same private French collection, have reappeared on the market. Presented by Gauchet Art Asiatique in collaboration with Minerve Enchères, these works offer a particularly interesting testament to the full artistic maturity of Vu Cao Dam.
An artist trained at the School of Fine Arts of Indochina
Born in Hanoi in 1908 into a learned family close to the imperial court, Vu Cao Dam grew up in an environment deeply influenced by literature, calligraphy, and classical Vietnamese culture. His father, Vu Dinh Thi, was a scholar and high-ranking mandarin attached to the court of Hue.
In 1926, the young artist joined the École des Beaux-Arts de l'Indochine, founded a year earlier in Hanoi by the French painter Victor Tardieu and Nguyễn Nam Sơn. This institution would play a major role in the birth of modern Vietnamese art.
Vu Cao Dam belongs to that first historical generation of Vietnamese artists trained according to Western academic methods while remaining deeply attached to their original culture. Alongside Le Pho, Mai Thu, and Le Thi Luu, he participated in the emergence of a new pictorial language blending Asian heritage and European modernity.
The beginnings: painting on silk and an aesthetic of restraint
Vu Cao Dam's early works were primarily created on silk. At that time, the artist still favored simple compositions, built around figures with synthetic outlines and deliberately restrained palettes.
The colors remain discreet: ochres, greys, pale blues and browns often dominate his compositions. The figures seem suspended in silent, almost timeless spaces.
This period already reveals several fundamental elements of his work: a deep interiority, a certain poetic melancholy and a marked taste for intimate subjects.
Very quickly, his works attracted attention in France. From the 1930s onwards, Vu Cao Dam exhibited in Paris and gradually established himself in a vibrant European artistic environment.
Settling in France and discovering European modernism
Like many artists of his generation, Vu Cao Dam eventually chose to settle permanently in France. After Paris, he moved to Vence in the south of the country, where he lived from 1959 until his death in 2000.
This change of environment profoundly transformed his painting.
The Mediterranean light, the landscapes of southern France and above all the discovery of the work of Marc Chagall provoked a major stylistic evolution.
Gradually, Vu Cao Dam abandoned silk to favor almost exclusively oil on canvas, panel or hardboard.
This transition is not simply a technical change. It marks a true liberation of painting.
A painting transformed into color, light, and music
From the 1960s onwards, Vu Cao Dam's work entered what is now considered his period of full maturity.
Color now takes center stage. The compositions blaze with luminous yellows, deep reds, emerald greens, and intense blues. The brushstrokes become freer, more ethereal, almost impressionistic in places.
The forms themselves seem to dissolve in the light.
Vu Cao Dam no longer seeks to depict reality. His painting becomes evocation, memory, and poetry. Landscapes transform into emotional spaces where figures appear almost like floating memories.
This evolution gives rise to works that are profoundly musical in their chromatic construction. The colors vibrate against each other through thin translucent layers and subtle impasto, barely perceptible at first glance.
Vietnamese literature and recurring themes
Throughout his career, Vu Cao Dam remained deeply attached to classical Vietnamese literature.
Among his main sources of inspiration is the famous Kiều novel by Nguyễn Du, considered one of the great foundational texts of Vietnamese culture.
From the 1960s and 1970s onwards, several themes became recurrent in his work:
maternity,
the riders,
the musicians,
young women,
the gardens,
dreamlike landscapes
contemplative figures.
These subjects are never treated narratively. Vu Cao Dam does not tell a story directly. On the contrary, he transforms literary memories into pictorial atmospheres.
"Maternity", 1978
The first work presented here, Maternity , perfectly illustrates this period.
of maturity.
In a landscape dominated by particularly luminous yellow and orange hues, a woman dressed in pink holds a child in her arms. In the background, a bluish male figure appears, seemingly observing the scene silently.
The entire work rests on an extremely subtle balance between figuration and the dissolution of forms. The figures remain present but seem almost absorbed by the surrounding light.
Vu Cao Dam demonstrates a remarkable mastery of chromatic harmonies. The contrasts between warm and cool colors create a constant vibration across the entire surface of the canvas.
The theme of motherhood occupies an essential place in his later work. More than a simple family scene, these compositions become for him timeless images of tenderness, memory and transmission.
The work is signed, dated 1978 and bears several handwritten inscriptions on the reverse of the canvas.
"The Rest", 1978
The second painting, The Rest , belongs to another fundamental thematic group in the work of Vu Cao Dam: that of the horseman.
In a landscape of red, green, and turquoise hues, a figure dressed in blue appears seated beside her horse. The scene seems suspended in a silent and meditative atmosphere.
As is often the case with this artist, the subject matter likely draws its origins from the poetic world of Kiều's novel . However, Vu Cao Dam avoids any precise narrative. The work functions primarily as an emotional evocation.
The freedom of the touch, the successive transparencies and the superimpositions of colors fully testify here to the mastery achieved by the painter in the 1970s.
Two works that remained unpublished for over twenty years
The history of these paintings further contributes to their interest.
According to provenance information, the works were discovered almost by chance in the early 2000s in a French consignment shop by discerning collectors who immediately recognized their quality and authenticity. Kept ever since in the same private French collection, they had remained completely unseen on the market until now.
Their reappearance thus offers a rare opportunity to rediscover two emblematic compositions from Vu Cao Dam's later period.
Vu Cao Dam and the international market today
For the past fifteen years or so, the market for modern Vietnamese art has experienced spectacular growth internationally. The works of Vu Cao Dam, Le Pho, and Mai Thu are now among the most sought-after in 20th-century Asian art.
Major auction houses such as Sotheby's and Christie's have played a significant role in this international recognition, with results regularly reaching several hundred thousand euros for major works.
Collectors are particularly interested in works from the late French period, where Vu Cao Dam probably achieved the freest and most poetic expression of his art.
Through Maternity and Rest , this entire intimate, literary and musical dimension reappears today: a painting of memory and light, which has become one of the most singular signatures of 20th century Vietnamese modernity.
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