Artist Do Minh Tam at the "Singing on the Hill" exhibition - Photo: T. DIEU
Each time Do Minh Tam holds a solo exhibition, it's a highly anticipated event for those who appreciate his paintings.
This time, Do Minh Tam's "Songs on the Hill" exhibition, currently taking place at the Vietnam Fine Arts Museum (until December 11-12), brings to art lovers many emotions and joys that spread from the artist's own youthful and cheerful spirit.
The exhibition features a series of paintings by Do Minh Tam created over the past five years, since his retirement from the Vietnam Fine Arts University, yet it feels like a joyful symphony of colors and emotions.
Like the fool whistling on the hill in The Beatles' song "The Fool on the Hill, " which Do Minh Tam often listens to while painting, and like "Many village girls singing on the hill" in Han Mac Tu's poem " Ripe Spring ."
The work "Remembering the Countryside" by Do Minh Tam
The path to abstract painting
Do Minh Tam is from Hung Yen but grew up in the heart of Hanoi's 36 streets and alleys. She received continuous art education from the age of 7-8, progressing through vocational school, university, and then postgraduate studies.
It can be said that he has had a very systematic learning process in painting, both through formal schooling and lifelong self-study, along with 30 years of teaching painting.
Do Minh Tam recounts that during his secondary school years, he honed his realistic drawing skills very well. However, during his trips to the South, starting in 1978, he bought books on Western art while wandering along Calmette Street in Ho Chi Minh City, which sparked his curiosity and later made him very fond of surrealist art.
Books such as the Encyclopedia of Art , books on Impressionism, Modernism, etc., led him down the fascinating path of surrealist painting.
Those were the years when the country was undergoing reforms, and many difficulties remained. In such circumstances, people were more likely to immerse themselves in dreams. Surrealist painting was precisely those dreams that Do Minh Tam entered.
His surrealist paintings are partly influenced by ancient folk festivals that were deeply ingrained in his mind from a young age, from the times he accompanied adults to watch bronze casting ceremonies that were then secretly held in the outskirts of Hanoi.
After several years of experimenting with surrealist painting, Do Minh Tam switched to abstract painting in his final years of university (1986), and has remained loyal to it to this day. By 1996, he considered himself to have established his personal abstract art style.
Since his first solo exhibition in 1993 at 29 Hang Bai Street, Hanoi - "Alone" - Do Minh Tam has had nearly a dozen solo exhibitions and numerous group exhibitions both domestically and internationally, and is recognized as one of the leading abstract painters in Vietnam today.
Art critic Nguyen Quan commented that while abstract painting has a history of two-thirds of a century in Vietnam, Do Minh Tam's work in the recent 20-year boom represents a significant contribution. Mr. Quan highly praised Do Minh Tam for his unwavering and discerning aesthetic vision, and his professional conduct and sense of honor.
Having followed artist Do Minh Tam throughout his career, art researcher Vu Huy Thong (Vietnam Fine Arts University) affirms that Do Minh Tam is a prominent figure among the few painters who have pursued abstract painting for a long time, creating a unique style, excelling in composition and form, and possessing a rich and extremely subtle ability to express color harmonies.
The works "Choir" (left) and "Going to the Full Moon Ceremony" (right)
A kind and refined heart.
One aspect of Do Minh Tam's paintings that critic Nguyen Quan appreciates is the artist's kind and refined soul, clearly evident in his work.
The dry sunlight on the walls of houses, behind the canopy of trees in some old backyard of the capital, or the gentle and quiet countryside... in Do Minh Tam's paintings evoke a sense of nostalgia.
Do Minh Tam's refined and gentle nature stems from his childhood, youth, and even now, his constant return to nature and the countryside. His life, intertwined with daily urban living, includes numerous trips back to the countryside and nature, both during evacuation periods and while accompanying students on internships in various mountainous and coastal provinces.
Therefore, although abstract art in Vietnam later flourished as a wave of innovation and gradually became a chaotic commercial phenomenon, Do Minh Tam seems to have deliberately avoided that trend, according to critic Nguyen Quan's observation.
"His humanistic aesthetic is gentle and tolerant. Perhaps he naturally followed the principle of the Russian abstract master: Art is meant to help refine the human soul. His abstract paintings capture subtle flavors easily overlooked in the inherent monotony of life, making our artist a unique abstract painter in Vietnam," Nguyen Quan shared.
As for Do Minh Tam, he says all that subtlety and gentleness comes from his very innocent nature. "I was born to love people, nature, my profession, food, and drink. Innocence and honesty must be the initial capital of an artist. An artist must be innocent to be creative," Do Minh Tam said.
Artist Do Minh Tam was selected as a member of the Asia- Pacific delegation at the International Forum of the Asia-Pacific Contemporary Art Triennial (APT 2nd edition, 1996, Brisbane, Australia).
He has been awarded the ASEAN Fine Arts Prize, a bronze medal at the National Fine Arts Exhibition, and has participated in art residency and exhibitions in many countries in the region. His works are housed in the Vietnam Fine Arts Museum, the National Museum of Singapore, and private collections in Vietnam, Germany, the USA, France, Australia, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
Source: https://tuoitre.vn/do-minh-tam-ngoi-hat-tren-doi-20251207100037806.htm
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