Art Partner Kunstuitleen

At my First visit at Vietnam I bought myself, as a souvenir, at a gallery a few beautiful paintings of wellknown Vietnamese artist. My family and friends were very enthusiastic on the paintings. So I decide to present the paintings in our gallery in Cuijk and Oss (Art Partner Kunstuitleen). And the clients of the gallery react very positive too. Soon I rented out the three paintings to my customers. “It cannot be a coincidence” I thought. That’s why I travelled to Vietnam again and going for new paintings this time. Through a gallery owner I contacted some artists and I did find the original lacquerpaintings.

Meantime our art collection is not only from Holland but a big part is Vietnamese, the country that produces authentic and original artworks. The occupation of the French during about 100 years, from about 1850 until 1950 is due to that. The French had a main contribution to the art education in Vietnam, which made it possible for artist to develop their art and crafts. They did that not only by teaching how to produce an artwork technically, but also by stimulating the process of creative thinking: an artist must create something from inside, from his own, and not copy something already exists (as it is done in other countries nearby). At that part Vietnam makes a difference: high quality and original art.

At my visits in Vietnam I decided to present the beautiful Vietnamese art at home. We started with an exhibition of the lacquerpaintings of Trinh Tuan.

After that other artists followed, each year another. Meantime my visits at Vietnam are more than just business trips: we go to visit friends. And to become a friend of a Vietnamese, you got to invest in contacts a lot.

About lacquerpaintings.
Lacquerpaintings are the typical art pieces of the North. They are painted on wood and exist from many layers of lacquer. This lacquer is the resin of a tree from the North of the country. After each layer the woodpanel must be scoured and polished. And in between the layers the artist makes the paintings with pigment and paint. Than lacquer again, and so on. Sometimes the artist uses eggshell as a decoration, or gold and silver leaf. You must realize the time for drying between the layer of lacquer is about two days, and each paintings exists of 15 to 20 layers. So is needs about more than a month to produce one lacquerpainting, so very intensive.

See more on: www.artpartner.nl

Mark van der Linden