A student in the last class of the Ecole des Beaux - Arts de l'Indochine, Nguyen Tu Nghiem joined the Resistance forces in 1945 and taught in the Viet Bac Fine - Arts College.
For 40 years, Nguyen Tu Nghiem has drawn upon the arts of the village to shape a distinctive modern Vietnamese art. He sought inspiration in the country's traditional culture rather than in the art of the West. A trailblazer and model for many Northern artists, young and old, Nghiem's work vividly demonstrates the kinship between traditional Vietnamese culture and the spirit of Western modernism. His paintings of village dances & festivals, national myths & literature and zodiac figures have captured the immediacy, energy and innocent exuberance of those village arts.

Born in 1922, Nghe An.
Trained at L' Ecole des Beaux - Arts de l'Indochine, Hanoi.
Lives in Hanoi.
His Art works...

With a palette of warm, hot, and sometimes garish colors, Tran Luu Hau is prone to an expressionistic style but his look is clearly introverted. He never paints things objectively as they appear before our senses, but always imbrue them with the light of his conscience before expressing them by the use of artistic means. Tran Luu Hau's Arts has been consistent, continuous, unique and powerful all the way through his artistic life's work. And - it seems - what have been created by those hands present a contrast with his age: The older he is, the more beautiful his paintings look! The more he is advanced in years, the more rule-breaking the painter will make!

Born in 1928, Ninh Binh.
Trained at the 'Resistance Course' of the Fine - Arts School and at the Surikov Fine - Arts Institute (in the former Soviet Union).
Lives and works in Hanoi.
His Art works...

Self taught artist. Began working as illustrator in Vietnam Cartoon Film Factory in 1961. By 1972 he had achieved the position of Cartoon Film Director with Vietnam Television.
Today, his paintings are characterised by strong contrasting colour fields in pure hue and intensity. While deeply rooted in the Asian tradition of painting his works yield a surprisingly modernistic sense of feeling and expression.

Born in 1943 in Hanoi.
Lives and works in Hanoi.
His Art works...

Like other artists in the group, Dang Xuan Hoa has a common expressionistic - abstractionist orientation combined with traditional humanistic ideas but with his own drawing style. Humans and objects are his two main topics and probably follow him throughout his life. In terms of single figure as well as regarding the general structure, Hoa equally owns the power of simplification and deepening. In any instance, sketches of a few strokes or real portrayal of personages, pictures of a few or a great many figures, sketchy or elaborate pictures, there always emanates a sensation of perfection from his artworks. For him, painting is a process of spiritual development in which love and respect for life serve as a way to better understand himself.

Dang Xuan Hoa

Born in 1959 in Nam Dinh.
Trained at the Hanoi College of Fine - Arts.
Lives in Hanoi.
Member of the GANG OF FIVE.*
His Art works...

Hoang Hong Cam offers no detailed accounts of specific domestic scenes, as does Hoa, but creates hightly charged poetic images in which human relationships and feelings are implied rather than expressed. Never having left Vietnam, he has a deep interest in indigenous folk art and a strong affinity with the unspoilt countryside. Unsophisticated peasants with their simple joys are the subjects of his paintings. He wants to express the feeling they have for life, not by facial expression or violent gesture but by the arrangement of forms and colours, leaving out all superflous details.

Hoang Hong Cam

Born in 1959 in Hanoi-Vietnam.
Graduated from the Hanoi College of Fine Arts and Industrial Design in 1983.
Lives in Hanoi
Illustration prize for Literature and Newspapers.
Member of the Vietnamese Fine Art Association
His Art works...