Nguyen Trung
Nguyen Trung (b. 1940, Vietnam) has a career span of more than 60 years marked by both the French colonial rule and the Vietnam War. He co-founded the Young Artists Association, a vanguard art group in Saigon in 1966. From 1961 to 1975, Trung devoted himself to figurative painting, mainly portraying beautiful female figures in their pure, poetic and tranquil essence. There was a period of time that Nguyen Trung aspired to join the movement of subduing the artist’s self to move toward building an ideal and nationalistic style that is purely Vietnamese – to be freed from any other established foreign influence. In 1990, Trung reinvented his practice and became one of Vietnam’s first and foremost abstract artists. He took daring steps to completely metamorphosize his own style to search for freedom and his inner self. During this period, along with other painters, he founded the famous Group of 10, and went on to become one of the most influential figures of the local art scene. If the first period of his career was marked by dreamy and romantic beauty, his lyrical abstraction of the later period shifted towards simplicity and minimalism, in order to express his continuous concern with the existential crisis and philosophical questions of today.
Throughout his esteemed career, Nguyen Trung has held multiple solo exhibitions including Gray White Black, Galerie Quynh, HCMC, Vietnam, 2011; Blackboard, Galerie Quynh, HCMC, Vietnam, 2004; Revelations of Time and Self, Trang An Gallery, Hanoi, Vietnam, 1999; Alliance Française, Saigon, Vietnam, 1967. The artist also participated in notable group exhibitions both domestically and internationally, including White Noise, Nguyen Art Foundation, HCMC, Vietnam, 2023; S.E.A Focus, Gillman Barracks, Singapore, 2019; Art Expo Malaysia Plus, MATRADE Exhibition and Convention Centre (MECC), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 2018; Rekindling Lacquer: Vietnamese Modern Painting in Shanghai Collections, China Art Museum, Shanghai, 2017; Open – 30 Years of Art during Doi Moi, Vietnam National Fine Arts Museum, Hanoi, Vietnam 2016; On the Horizon, Pacific Bridge Contemporary Southeast Asian Art, Oakland, California, USA, 1998; Société Nationale des Beaux Arts Biennial, Grand Palais, Paris, France, 1991; and the annual Abstract painting Exhibitions, initiated by the Group of 10 and led by Nguyen Trung between 1990–1996.
His works are held in many private and public collections such as the Vietnam National Fine Art Museum, Vietnam; Ho Chi Minh City Fine Art Museum, Vietnam; Singapore Art Museum, Singapore; and Museo Biblioteca Archivio, Italy.