Do Thi Ninh
Đỗ Thị Ninh (b. 1947) graduated from Hanoi’s Vietnam College of Fine Arts in 1966 and is part of the generation of artists who emerged in the early 1980s and began to rebel against what they perceived as the superficiality, lack of personality and dogmatic formulas of mainstream art. They sought new outlets and directions for Vietnamese painting, and seem to have succeeded in persuading the authorities to accept diversity and individual freedom in artistic creation. She joined Mỹ Thuật [Fine Art] magazine team under editor-in-chief Nguyễn Quân during the brief period in which the magazine shifted its focus from articles about war heroes, the Khóa Kháng Chiến (Resistance class) and Soviet Socialist Realism to publishing critical artistic discourse oriented toward modernist internationalism. Đỗ Thị Ninh is known for her lacquer and oil paintings depicting Vietnamese landscapes, and little has been written about her experience as a wartime sketch artist. In 1971 she was sent to the central Quảng Bình province to practise sketching young soldiers who were being trained before heading south on the Ho Chi Minh Trail.