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\n\tLe Van De (Vietnam, 1906-1966)Our painter participated in the\u00a0Colonial Exhibition in Paris in 1931<\/a>.<\/p>\n In his “Report on the participation of the Indochina School of Fine Arts at the International Colonial Exhibition in Paris”,\u00a0Victor Tardieu\u00a0specifies L\u00e9 Van D\u00e9’s contribution: two oil paintings, “The Red River in Hanoi” and “Boats on the Red River”; a kakemono, “The Harvest” and a layout:<\/p>\n \u00ab\u00a0The greater part of the lacquer room, principally the three main panels composed and executed by the students LE PHO, LE VAN DE, THANG TRAN PHENH (…) the exterior entrance of the lacquer room bas-relief in staff(e) by LE VAN DE\u00a0\u00bb (Victor Tardieu handwritten note has been kept):<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t Versatility of the School and the artist: the young L\u00e9 Van D\u00e9, painter on canvas, engraver on wood, lacquerer and molder…\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n In 1930, he received a scholarship from the “Society for the Intellectual and Physical Improvement of the Indigenous People of Cochinchina”, – a southern charitable association -, to study at the Beaux-Arts in Paris as a student of\u00a0Jean-Pierre Laurens<\/a>\u00a0(1875-1932). The latter had welcomed two years earlier\u00a0Fang Ganmin<\/a>\u00a0(1906-1984) who returned to China to become an influential teacher (notably of\u00a0Zao Wou-Ki<\/a>,\u00a0Chu Teh Chun<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Wu Guanzhong<\/a>). He was in Paris when Fang fell in love with Sue Ailan (1905-1985) whom he met at the Beaux-Arts in the Humbert studio (the only one authorized to receive female students…) and whom he would marry on his return to China.<\/p>\n L\u00e9 Van D\u00e9 was noticed in 1932 and 1933 during the Salon Officiel des Artistes Fran\u00e7ais (Paris) and obtained an “honorable mention”. In 1934, the French government bought from him a large canvas (179 X 225 cm) “The family interior in Tonkin” which he exhibited at the International Exhibition of Colonial Art in Naples:<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t He was solicited by Rome and Athens with a French government grant (6 months). Italy conquered him: in 1936 at the Vatican he was in charge of the decoration of the Asian and Australian rooms of the International Exhibition of the Catholic Press. His inclusion of the Virgin and Child on a lotus… – in front of the temple… of Angkor – was a great success.<\/p>\n That same year he was baptized in Rome by the man whose baptismal name he chose, “Celso” (he became Celso-L\u00e9on-Francesco, hence the C-L-F in his new signature),\u00a0Monsignor Celso Constantini<\/a>\u00a0(1876-1958), who became a cardinal (in 1953) and devoted a large part of his life to strengthening Chinese Catholicism.<\/p>\n He returned to Vietnam in early 1939 as a “charg\u00e9 de mission” of the French government. Mr. Nguyen Khac Nuong’s speech at the reception of L\u00e9-Van-D\u00e9 on March 27, 1939\u00a0at the S.A.M.I.P.I.C<\/a>\u00a0gives us a complete summary of his life up to that point. Let us add that he was one of the founders (and president) of FARTA (Foyer de l’Art Annamite) in 1942 with\u00a0To Ngoc Van,\u00a0Tran Van Can,\u00a0Luong Xuan Nhi, Nguyen Khang and Georges Khanh. FARTA was inspired by AFIMA (“Hoi Khai Tri Tien Duc”) founded by\u00a0Pham Quynh<\/a>\u00a0in 1919. Its influence remains to be demonstrated but let us remember the emblem of the roof represented above the letters FARTA wanting to represent the autonomous house (finally…) where the artists could expose their works and confront their ideas. Wishful thinking if ever there was… because 1945 and its upheavals drastically changed the deal: on September 2 it is on a stage he set up on Ba Dinh Square in Hanoi that Ho Chi Minh declared the independence of Vietnam.<\/p>\n But let’s not jump ahead. We are in 1942. And L\u00e9 Van D\u00e9 was treated with all the honors. He has conquered the West. The French academician\u00a0Louis Gillet<\/a>\u00a0(1876-1943) had prefaced the booklet of his exhibition held in Paris from May 13 to 25, 1938. Honored by the Vatican, distinguished by the French government, exhibited and commented on, praised, elected by his peers president of FARTA.<\/p>\n At 36 years old, he was almost an institution.<\/strong><\/p>\n He then chose to compose “The Young Woman with a Dove”, a unique and atypical work. These sudden breaks in style are not unusual in Vietnamese painting. We need only think of T\u00f4 Ngoc Van in particular.<\/p>\n The work is much more colorful than his previous works mostly yellow-brown.<\/p>\n\t But even more so, this small (42.5 x 36 cm) gouache and ink on silk is one of L\u00e9 Van D\u00e9’s most beautiful. The French collector who owned it assured me that the model was the own wife of the artist Georges Khanh.<\/p>\n This very beautiful woman displays the features of modern femininity of her time in Vietnam. Made-up eyes, plucked eyebrows, red lipstick, headdress, redesigned\u00a0ao dai: all the heritage of\u00a0Tu Luc Van Doan’s<\/a>\u00a0ideals brought to life by\u00a0Nguyen Cat Tuong\u00a0since the 30 ies.<\/p>\nThe pearl necklace and the jewel in the ear show financial ease. A Vietnamese painting? Secularised? De-Westernized? Di-sinized?<\/p>\n All at the same time.<\/strong><\/p>\n Later, at the request of\u00a0Bao Dai<\/a>, he designed a stamp for Vietnam. Then, having left the communist north in 1954, he became the director of the Saigon School of Fine Arts on December 31, 1954, which was nearby the Gia Dinh’s one (created in 1913).<\/p>\nL\u00e9 Van D\u00e9 died in Saigon on March 16, 1966. After\u00a01975 and the fall of Saigon<\/a>, his statue – executed by Le Thanh Non (1940-2002) in 1973 – will be removed from the courtyard of the School of Fine Arts where it was set. Worse still, and the ultimate humiliation for an artist – no doubt the painter Nguyen Do Cung, the founder of the museum, in 1966, would have been appalled –\u00a0crude forgeries of his paintings were hung on the walls of the Hanoi Museum of Fine Arts. In 1968, the American Colonel James Darf was able to declare about\u00a0Ben Tr\u00e9<\/a>: “To save the city, it was necessary to raze it” (sic).<\/p>\n His image hidden, his works scorned, the city of his childhood annihilated.<\/strong><\/p>\n Everything is in this painting, a viaticum for martyrdom. It is the manifesto of an idea that will not take: the third way. Between the West and the Communists.<\/p>\n An absence of choice.<\/p>\n Because when everything makes sense, nothing makes sense anymore.<\/p>\n The return to his country –\u00a0which Vu Cao Dam, Le Pho, Mai Thu, Le Thi Luu will not do\u00a0– was a respectable quest, but to quest is not to beg.<\/p>\n Yes, deconstruction, if it is only demodeling, is only disillusionment.<\/p>\n But God, he believed, already knew it…<\/p>\n Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Hubert<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Le Van De (Vietnam, 1906-1966) Lady with Dove Signed and dated ’42 lower left Ink and gouache on silk laid on paper 42.5 x 26 cm. (16 1\/2 x 10 1\/4 in.) painted in 1942 Le Van De, The Woman With The Dove Or the deconstruction, source of disillusionment L\u00e9 Van D\u00e9 was born on …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4452,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,13,379],"tags":[78,27,38,28,44,37,54],"class_list":["post-4472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archive","category-fine-art","category-southeast-asian-art","tag-20th-21st-century-art","tag-christies","tag-ebai","tag-jean-francois-hubert","tag-le-van-de","tag-the-ecole-des-beaux-arts-de-lindochine","tag-the-school-of-fine-arts-of-indochina"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thucdoan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thucdoan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thucdoan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thucdoan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thucdoan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4472"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thucdoan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4472\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4478,"href":"https:\/\/thucdoan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4472\/revisions\/4478"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thucdoan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thucdoan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thucdoan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thucdoan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/thucdoan.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/image3-5-1-768x1106-1.jpeg\")
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\n\t
\nShe does not look at us.
\nThe environment in which she appears is unreal.
\nHer bust, alone, emerges from clouds, one of which is rising in the background. A dove clutches her right shoulder.
\nIn the background, a golden disk could be a halo or a moon or a sun.
\nAll decorative or symbolic elements, profane or sacred, on which one could argue. Instead,let’s us assume that L\u00e9 Van D\u00e9 delivers a decorative syncretism.
\nThe signature is unusual with its letters without dashes and its diacritical marks. No more “C-L-F”, no more Chinese ideograms, no more stamp.\n
\nFortunately, he did not have time to see his world collapse, his image erased and, finally, the failure of his career.\n