Nguyen Gia Tri (1908-1993)

He was born in 1908 in the Ha Dong district of Ha Tay province in North Vietnam. As a student at the L'Ecole des Beaux-Arts de L'Indochina in the 1930s, he was a leading force in turning lacquer painting from a decorative handicraft to a means of artistic expression. Working with other craftsmen, Tri combined foreign engraving and inlaying methods and the basic principles of European painting with new lacquer techniques for preparing, polishing and coloration. Faced with a very limited range of colors - transparent brown, black and a few reds - Tri and others produced new colors from various raw materials like crushed or inlaid eggshells to create pure and bluish white. A wider palate, sub...