Lê Phô was one of the first Vietnamese artists to graduate from the École des Beaux Arts de l’Indochine (Indochina School of Fine Arts) in Hanoi, and his work represents the ambitious artistic experiments of his generation. In his Jeune Fille en Blanc (1931), a young woman is depicted lost in thought, in a subtle harmony of pale, silvery tones. The colophon in the upper left corner of the composition suggests the reason for her preoccupation: this extract from an eighteenth-century Vietnamese poem is the lament of a wife whose husband is away at war. While “modern women” were a popular subject in Vietnamese art and literature of the 1930s, Lê Phô chose a more traditional image of female loyalty and duty. The work’s flat, pared-down style suggests his interest in European modern art, but the restricted colour palette, the inclusion of the calligraphic colophon, and the celadon vase in the foreground establish a link to Vietnamese aesthetics. This work was planned for exhibition in the Prima Mostra Internazionale d’Arte Coloniale in Rome (1931) as part of a policy for sending Vietnamese art abroad for sales and colonial propaganda. Works such as Lê Phô’s, however, exceeded narrow colonial ambitions and are seen as achievements within Vietnamese Modernism.
This is the first time the work of Lê Phô is presented at Biennale Arte.
—Phoebe Scott
