*Méditation, 1966
Oil on canvas, signed and dated lower right, titled, countersigned and dated on the back
33.7 x 24.4 cm – 13 x 9 ½ in.
A multi-talented artist, Vũ Cao Đàm initially tried his hand at sculpture, before employing ink and colors on silk to finally adopt oil painting. His choice of mediums accompanied his life changes, with sculpture and silk linked to his years in Indochina and pre-war Paris and oil rather to his years in the South of France. His oil paintings are articulated around recurring characters in his work. Among them, a young man and a young woman and her child, all three dressed in traditional garb as in Méditation and La Promenade. These characters with supple silhouettes are made of round faces, the full forms recalling the artist’s early sculptures. While the models are inspired by Vietnamese canons, Vũ Cao Đàm has freed himself from the codes of Far Eastern painting and tends towards a very modernist representation, in which where the brushstroke becomes fragmented it reveals an almost abstract background. He manages to suggest more than he represents in the various plans and thus creates a new depth. His touch is juxtaposed and brings a better perspective. Relying on a luminous palette, Vũ Cao Đàm, handles with excellence the different tones of blue, yellow, red and green offering to these compositions an ideal harmony but also a journey to the edge of a real Eden for the eye of the spectator.
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