Quang Minh Nguyen

Vietnam, 1970

BiographyMinh was born in 1970 in Hai Duong Province in Vietnam. In 1994 he graduated from Hai Noi Fine Arts College, and now teaches at the Central Music and Painting Teacher’s Training College.
However, what he was taught and is now teaching has little to do with the painting style he has chosen. His imagery – women and children, flowers and grass, cows and buffaloes – is rendered by generalized linear figures in a minimalistic way. His work breathes innocence even when he wants to express mature philosophical thought.
Although his work wavers between naive figuration and abstraction, his influences lie clearly in folklore and cultural traditions. “I love Vietnamese folklore, I’ve grown up with it,” says Minh, “It is in the lullabies by which my mother soothed me into sleep.” Through these themes he is able to reinforce his concepts of Vietnamese identity. “Life is multi-faceted” says Minh, “An artist must choose for himself an appropriate area of expression. I’m striving to get at the spiritual aspect of things, at that something beyond the visible which keeps escaping me.”

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