Finding the sculpture garden at An Vien waterfall by Truong Dinh Que

TCS in An Vien — Plaster/cement statue of Trinh Cong Son, after restoration.

Truong Dinh Que (December 21, 1939 - January 21, 2016) along with Do Toan (1940 - 2000), Le Cong Thanh (1932 - 2019), Pham Van Hang (born 1942) are sculpting personalities of Quang Nam, although some are from Thua Thien Hue, some are famous in Hanoi .

Before returning to An Vien stream

Before 1975, Truong Dinh Que taught at the Hue Fine Arts School. After 1975, in addition to composing, he was a lecturer at the Ho Chi Minh City University of Fine Arts and the Ho Chi Minh City University of Architecture for a short time, and was a member of the Executive Committee of the City Fine Arts Association for several terms.

He sold silk paintings and made many classical statues for customers, so his family had a spacious house in Thu Duc Press Village - a place frequented by many artists. Truong Dinh Que brought Quang's personality into life and creation in the South.

In 2001, after his fellow musician Trinh Cong Son passed away, Truong Dinh Que repeatedly locked his feet to a pillar in the house, so as not to have to go out, so as not to see the old scene without his old friend.

During this time of "renovation and painting", he made quite a few iron statues, more unfinished than completed, so the Thu Duc house, although spacious, quickly became cramped.

Then through a friend's introduction, he bought a piece of land right next to An Vien waterfall (Binh An commune, Long Thanh district, Dong Nai province) to build a studio and a sculpture garden.

The river flowing through Dong Nai is about 50km long, but has 3 names, the middle section is An Vien, the Long Khanh section is Nhan, the section near Highway 51 is La Buong. From Nhan, it flows down to An Vien, then ends at La Buong, just like the generous and playful artistic life of Truong Dinh Que, letting go is quite easy.

Truong Dinh Que graduated from the Gia Dinh National College of Fine Arts in 1960 with a degree in painting and sculpture and a degree in painting pedagogy in 1961. He became famous in both sculpture and painting before 1975, maintaining his creative inspiration and living happily with his profession all his life. Regarding sculpture, in addition to typical works such as Woman Sitting with Knees Brace, Aspiration, High Aspiration, Peace, Afternoon Wind, Birds, Fish, Wild Boar, Weasel and Night Clouds, Traveler, Polluted Smoke, Factory, One Direction..., he also made an impression with portraits of Bui Giang, Trinh Cong Son, Nguyen Duc Son, Hoang Ngoc Tuan, Ho Hoang Dai...

Truong Dinh Que often wrote poetry, liked to recite poetry and sing. Therefore, although the sculpture garden was about 60km from the center of Saigon, his literary friends often came here to read poetry, sing, and discuss compositions all night long.

Here he displays several dozen statues - mostly plaster and some cement, steel, and bronze - including statues of Bui Giang and Trinh Cong Son, in several different poses.

As art researcher Huynh Huu Uy said: “Truong Dinh Que made very beautiful classical portraits, from which we can see how the strong vitality of modern sculpture Truong Dinh Que developed. […]. For Truong Dinh Que, the experience of creating shapes and the works of Julio González brought him a lot of inspiration, just as Brancusi, Gargallo and Despiau had encouraged and inspired Julio González.

Truong Dinh Que's sculptures are always full of expressions of anxiety, to build a new order of lines and volumes, a dynamic, strong, vibrant, passionate neo-fauvist world amidst separate wild obsessions". Part of this can be seen through the full-body statues of Trinh Cong Son, Bui Giang...

On the afternoon of February 28, 2024, after many years in the foundry, the bronze statue of Trinh Cong Son, 1.7m high, 1.6m wide, 2.3m long, and weighing 500kg, was placed in Trinh Cong Son Park, on the banks of the Huong River (Thua Thien Hue).

This statue was ordered by Mr. Le Hung Manh (Gia Hoa Construction and Real Estate Company), a native of Quang Nam, to be made by Truong Dinh Que. Mr. Manh also ordered the bronze casting of a statue of Bui Giang, wanting to settle in Quang Nam, but it was not really destined, so it is still in storage, quite a pity.

Save Trinh Cong Son statue in plaster

After Truong Dinh Que passed away, An Vien Sculpture Garden quickly closed, gradually being robbed by thieves, first things that could be sold as aluminum and plastic such as bronze statues, iron and steel, fences, corrugated iron roofs, pots and pans, machinery...

TCS in Hue — Bronze statue of Trinh Cong Son in Hue.

In 2020, I went to visit with some friends and found it quite desolate, with traces of drug addicts "setting up a cave" here. When I returned in 2024, the trees had grown so thick that I could no longer see the path.

About 2km from An Vien Sculpture Garden as the crow flies, there is Mr. Nguyen Trong Hiep, a lover of Southern cultural and artistic heritage, who has just moved here for a short time.

Mr. Hiep's garden house has a local maid who once told him that next to the stream there is an abandoned house with many damaged cement statues inside, but no one knows who they belong to.

After being shown around by the maid, Mr. Hiep did not know who this house belonged to, but saw that the plaster and cement statues were covered with grass and trees and were about to rot, so he reported it to the local authorities.

Mr. Hiep temporarily brought about 10 plaster busts, with little damage, to his garden for easy preservation, including a plaster/cement statue of Trinh Cong Son, in the original 1:1 ratio mold with the bronze statue located in Hue.

The Trinh Cong Son statue was badly damaged, so Mr. Hiep and his friends spent many months researching, reinforcing, and restoring it.

“I just keep it here temporarily, like finding lost property waiting to return it to its owner, without any intention of owning or selling it. If I hadn’t brought it here, the buffaloes, rain, wind and trees would have damaged it all. The Trinh Cong Son statue is the heaviest and largest, so I placed it solemnly near the entrance to the garden, so that later, whoever is the owner can easily bring in a crane to take it out,” Trong Hiep shared.

Not only the plaster/cement statue in An Vien was damaged, many iron and steel statues of Truong Dinh Que in many places such as Vung Tau, Ho Chi Minh City, An Giang... were also degraded. The most seriously damaged was probably the Traveler statue (also known as Traveler) placed in Bach Thao Park (Hanoi) since 1997, by 2022 it was almost collapsed because the supporting pillar was rusty.

During a reunion at the end of 2013, Truong Dinh Que once wished that after his death he would be buried in the corner of An Vien garden, lying there listening to singing and occasionally listening to friends come to sing and read poetry.

This strong and poetic thought did not come true, when he passed away, for the convenience of incense offerings, his family chose to cremate him. And the garden that once echoed with the sounds of welding and poetry recitation, is now about to become a desolate patch of grass and trees.

As Bui Giang said, Truong Dinh Que said: "The old sky's clouds are worn away/ The tumultuous dream only has two hands left/ The body with the fragment of the figure/ The body with the long night of storms".

Source: https://baoquangnam.vn/tim-ve-vuon-tuong-o-thac-an-vien-cua-truong-dinh-que-3156749.html