Tô Ngọc Vân

Girl with flower

Tô Ngọc Vân (19061954), also known as Tô Tử, was a Vietnamese painter. Several of his works hang in the Vietnam National Museum of Fine Arts.[1][2] He taught a resistance art class in the northern zone during the war with the French, and died as the result of injuries received at the Battle of Điện Biên Phủ.[3] He was among the first recipients of the Ho Chi Minh Prize in 1996.

He worked as painting teacher in Bưởi school, professor at the École des Beaux-Arts de l’Indochine and principal of the Việt Bắc Art School and has had significant influence on a whole generation of artists in Vietnam.[4]

Vân contributed to the magazines of Tự Lực văn đoàn ("Self-Strengthening literary group") by drawing cartoons on current events, social issues, and everyday live.[5]

The To Ngoc Van (crater) on Mercury was named in his honour.[6]

References

  1. Tác phả̂m mỹ thuật sưu tập của bảo tàng mỹ thuật Việt Nam Bảo tàng mỹ thuật Việt Nam - 2002 "The sketches of the land reform, Vietnamese soldiers, the North-West region, the route of military campaigns, etc. made by Tô Ngọc Vân- the talented artist of the previous romantic trend marked a change in his work."
  2. Bảo tàng mỹ thuật Việt Nam Trọng Thiềm Cao - 1999 "artist Tô Ngọc Vân became an artistic and cultural centre of the revolutionary base. ... Trần Văn Cẩn's woodcut “Let's join the army" (1949) and silk painting “You've made a mistake in reading, my child", Tô Ngoc Vân's series of paintings on the ..."
  3. Mark Philip Bradley (2009). Vietnam at War'. p. 63. He oversaw the establishment of the state's school for the arts in the northern resistance zone during the French war. […] the school and its artists produced paintings, posters, stamps, and other visual emblems for the Vietnamese state and its […]
  4. Lý Trực Dũng (2010). Biếm họa Việt Nam. Hanoi: NXB Mỹ Thuật. p. 38.
  5. Lý Trực Dũng (2010). Biếm họa Việt Nam. Hanoi: NXB Mỹ Thuật. p. 39.
  6. NASA "To Ngoc Van was named in 2009 in honor of the 20th century Vietnamese painter"