FATHER OF HAND STAMPING ON SILK

Painter Tu Duyen is known in Vietnam as the founder of hand stamping on silk and many of his works have been snapped up by foreign buyers including the US’s billionaire Rockefeller family.

Born in 1915 in the northern Bac Ninh province, Tu Duyen, real name Duyen Van Nguyen, graduated from the Indochina Fine Arts College in 1938. He left an indelible imprint on Vietnamese painting techniques with his success in creating wood block printing on silk, known as Thu An Hoa.

Wood block printing is a technique often used for printing text, images, or patterns on paper and cloth, and is widely used in East Asian countries, especially China and Japan. In Vietnam wood block printing had long been popular in creating Dong Ho folk paintings, but to make a painting with 10 colors, for instance, people had to use 10 different wood blocks each with a single color.

In 1940 Tu Duyen began to devote himself to simplifying the technique and three years later succeeded in finding a new original technique he called Thu An Hoa. Using it, a painter needs only two wooded blocks – yin and yang – and uses his fingers to mix colors and arrange them on the woodblocks before putting a silk sheet on the blocks and stamping it, creating a painting with numerous colors.

By 1950 Tu Duyen’s art form was recognized nationwide. His hand-stamping paintings were very vivid and fanciful that none of the ink paintings could compare with them.

Tu Duyen derived his inspiration from Vietnamese literature, especially from Truyen Kieu (The Tale of Kieu) and Luc Van Tien, the two most recognizable and influential epics written by the poets Nguyen Du (1765-1820) and Nguyen Dinh Chieu (1822-1888).

Among Tu Duyen’s major topics were enchanting sceneries, festivities, traditional architecture, and daily life on the farm. He was also fond of depicting famous characters from Vietnamese history – like Tran Binh Trong, a general who served the Tran Dynasty in the 13th century. During a battle with the invading Yuan army, Trong was captured and offered a high position in their feudal system if he surrendered. He refused and was beheaded in February 1285. The general is legendary for his reply to his captors: “I’d rather be a ghost of the Southern country (Vietnam) than be the king of the Northern nation (China).”

Tu Duyen’s painting of Trong won the first prize in a fine arts competition in southern Vietnam in 1955. This work, together with another painting titled Khuyen Hoc (Studying promotion), was bought by Rockefeller, one of the richest Americans in history, before 1975.

Also before 1975 the Cambodian embassy in Saigon bought five of Tu Duyen’s paintings of Angkor Wat.  Tu Duyen’s paintings have also been well received in many countries including the Philippines, France, Japan, Malaysia, and Belgium. More than 14 of his works are preserved and displayed at the Ho Chi Minh City Fine Arts Museum.

(Reported: Ha Dinh Nguyen | Translated: Thu Thuy)