Vu Cao Dam
Vu Cao Dam was born in 1908 in Hanoi to a French-speaking father.
He entered the Indochina School of Fine Arts in 1926, where he studied painting, drawing and sculpture until 1931. During the first ten years of his career, he mainly worked in sculpture, which is how he became famous.
He participated in the 1931 Paris Universal Exhibition, and decided to settle permanently in France. He settled first in Paris until 1949 but then moved to the Côte d’Azur in 1952. He became more and more interested in painting and endeavoured to reconcile Sino-Vietnamese tradition with Western art. Vu Cao Dam mainly expressed himself in silk painting. It clearly shows the influence of Marc Chagall and exponents of Art Brut like Dubuffet.
His favourite subjects were portraits and scenes mostly depicting his compatriots in Vietnamese traditional clothing. His lines are elongated, the colours are subtle and the silhouettes are delicate and graceful. The works of Vu Cao Dam are full of gentleness and poetry.
Our evaluation of the painted work (i.e. the gouaches, inks, silk paints and oils) of Le Pho/Mai Thu/Vu Cao Dam enables us to assert the pictorial and technical quality of these paintings and thus meet the demands of collectors who are mostly located in Asia and have confidence in us. This evaluation is recommended before presentation at auction and before any estimates are given. Following this technical assessment, we give a positive or negative opinion about a work’s inclusion in the catalogue raisonné we are putting together.
The catalogues raisonnés of various Asian painters who came to France at the beginning of the 20th century are currently being compiled by Charlotte Reynier-Aguttes. Anyone with works by these artists is invited to contact her so that these can be included in the relevant catalogue raisonné.
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