Tran Trung Tin
Tran Trung Tin (1933-2008, Vietnam) was born in Ben Tre and joined the Resistance against the French when he was 12 years old. In 1954, he was mobilized to Hanoi and admitted to the Vietnam Academy of Theater and Cinema where he worked as an actor and a screenwriter for propaganda films. In 1969, he started drawing and became known as a self-taught artist. In 1975, he moved to Ho Chi Minh City where he continued to work and lived until his death in 2008.
In 2001, Tran Trung Tin had his first solo exhibition at the Singapore Art Museum. His works have been exhibited internationally in the UK, US, France, Thailand, Japan etc. and are included in many art collections. In 2013, five years after his death, his wife – Mrs. Tran Thi Huynh Nga, founder of Blue Space Contemporary Art Center – organized his first solo exhibition in Vietnam titled Optimistic Tragedy (Vietnam Fine Arts Museum, Hanoi). After ten years, on the occasion of the late artist’s 90th birthday anniversary, Tran Trung Tin once again returned to Hanoi – “the city I have loved more than once”* – with a second solo exhibition titled Birdsong (Manzi Art Space, 2023).
*excerpt from Tran Trung Tin’s telegram to the Vietnam Film Studio after moving back to Ho Chi Minh City in 1975