Danh họa Tô Ngọc Vân

November-December 1953:
Tô Ngọc Vân’s Re-educational Pilgrimage

Towards the end of 1953, Tô Ngọc Vân was sent on a re-educational pilgrimage to live in Ninh Dân village in Phú Thọ Province just over 110 kilometres northwest of Hanoi. He lived with the villagers and painted pictures of their struggle against landlords. If nothing else, this forced government imposed assignment, reflected Hồ Chí Minh’s Stalinist ambitions for equal redistribution of land between the poor in rural populations. Listed as point number seven, “Carrying out Agrarian Reform”, in the Lao Động Manifesto, Hồ Chí Minh highlighted the importance of land reform “to improve the living conditions of the peasants and to mobilise the majority of the people, that is, the peasants, to participate actively in the armed Resistance, to increase production and ensure supplies.”[1] By 1956, 13,500 landlords and reactionaries would be murdered. For Vân, the assignment would produce some of his more notable works in a series that was later exhibited to high acclaim in Northern Vietnam.

It is uncertain why Vân was sent on a re-educational pilgrimage, but there are clues. Vân was outspoken on the subject of propaganda art. At the National Convention on Art and Literature in 1948, Vân had engaged in heated debates with then Party General Secretary Trường Chinh on the topic of whether propaganda paintings could be considered works of art. These debates highlighted Vân’s lukewarm acceptance of the principles of revolutionary ideals and social realism in art. While unquestionably a patriot, it is also true that Van devoted his life as much to art as he did to his country, the opinions he expressed at the National Convention on Art and Literature aimed at defending art itself rather than his homeland, against a no less formidable potential “enemy”. His dedication to art and artistic culture was no less apparent during his time as director of the Central Fine Arts College in Phú Thọ Province (1950-1951), having been documented as leading students on walks through the countryside and ruminating on the works of Millet, Courbet, Monet and Renoir in relation to the rural Vietnamese aesthetic. This juxtaposition as both warrior artist and artistic romantic neutralises Vân’s image as simply a revolutionary Viet Minh soldier.

Original authentic works of Tô Ngọc Vân are extremely rare to encounter in Vietnam. Although collectors purport to come across many works by Vân in Hanoi, independent research discovered that a large number of “Tô Ngọc Vân” works were produced in the late 1990s and early 2000s, long after the artist’s death in 1954, to satisfy demand in the market. These included student drawing studies that were produced years before and then signed as being by the hand of Tô Ngọc Vân. The works featured here were acquired by Ambassador Teucci[2] in Hanoi in the late 1980s at a time when there were no illicit reproductions in the market.



References and footnotes:
[1] The Manifesto and Platform of the Viet-Nam Lao Dong Party, Supplement to People’s China, Vol. III, No. 9, May 1st 1951.

[2] Italian Ambassador.

Nguồn: Vietnam: The Art of War -