Vu Cao Dam (Vietnam, 1908-2000)
Tête de femme (Head of a Woman)
signed ‘Vu Cao Dam’ (on the back of the neck)
terracotta sculpture, with artist’s base
sculpture: 20 (H) x 10 x 10 cm. (7 7/8 x3 7/8 x 3 7/8 in.)
base: 6 x 6.7 x 7 cm. (2 3/8 x 2 5/8 x 2 3/4 in.)
Executed in 1946
This unlike most of the groups of flowers represented by the artist will be present at the upcoming Christie’s Hong Kong Autumn Evening Auction Sale of 20th/21st Century Art, 30 November 2022. This will also be showcased at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center prior to the official sale from 26 November 2022.
VU CAO DAM HEAD OF YOUNG WOMAN 1946
OR THE EMBODIMENT AGAINST ATTENUATION
This sumptuous head, of rare elegance, is modeled - not molded, making it a unique piece that retains in its recesses the fingerprints of the artist who patiently created it, and set on its original wooden base, also made by the artist. A rough original screw, which testifies to the post-war scarcity in France, joins the base and the head.
Tête de femme (Head of a Woman) by Vu Cao Dam (Vietnamese, 1908-2000)
Vu Cao Dam, the Hanoian, lived in Paris for 15 years before moving to Vanves, a neighboring town, where this head was sculpted. The painter, his wife Renée and their children Yannick and Michel were reunited there after the privations of the war, and the artist, more serene, devoted the beautiful light of the apartment to his art.
"This head seems to me to be more "embodied", fuller than the very idealized ones of the 1930s or even the early 1940s" (Michel Vu, the artist’s son).
In fact, Vu Cao Dam, taking advantage of the greater plasticity of the clay and choosing to stick less to the masses, moves away from his earlier style made of bronze in 1930 and exhibited at the Colonial Exhibition in Paris in 1931.
This head, much more clearer embodied, presents a different style.
To solicit matter (the clay) as a support for the memory.
Vu Cao Dam operates by modeling with his fingers but also with tools by incisions and striations to achieve the softness of these eyes no longer closed, this subtle smile, all charming, the thin nose, half-opened mouth and slender neck. Vu Cao Dam builds this seductive woman with his bare hands sometimes with the help of wooden spatulas, some of which have a wire end.
"He sometimes used his saliva to make the little clay balls adhere, adding them while explaining to me that I had to be careful not to let any air bubbles get into the clay," Michel Vu explains. An unusual dabbling certainly which translates the passion of the artist.
After his departure to Béziers in 1949 and then to Vence in 1952, before settling permanently in Saint-Paul de Vence in 1959, Vu Cao Dam returned to sculpture. He will execute, in 1956, Two young girls in bronze in an edition of 6 copies, in a different style again (Christie's Hong Kong, 24 November 2019, lot 139).
My father often said to his visitors to Saint-Paul, Michel Vu recalls, "I will return to the earth", which made his interlocutors smile. This sublime head lets us better understand his desire.
Jean-François Hubert
Senior Expert, Arts of Vietnam
