Mai Trung Thu - Artist Info

About Mai Trung Thu

Name variants

Trung Thu Mai, May Thu
  • Biography from Sotheby's Hong Kong

    Despite having lived in France for the majority of his life, Mai Thu retained a strong sense of patriotism and devotion to the mores from his homeland, finding delight in incorporating Vietnamese subject matter to his art. This artist embodies a generation of progressive Vietnamese artists that emerged during the 1930s, including Le Pho and Vu Cao Dam. Seven years after graduating from the École des Beaux-Arts de l'Indochine in Hanoi, Mai Thu moved to Paris where he began merging the French Salon style with Vietnamese aesthetic traditions.

    Also a film-maker and photographer, Mai Thu exposes his penchant for these fields of art in his ambrosial yet theatrical work. Though he seemingly depicts a simple theme within a single scene, Mai Thu imbues an element of drama to the work through the use of body language and composition, suggesting there is evidently far more to the narrative.

    Distinguished for his pithy and precise brushwork, Mai Thu employs thin black lines to delineate the soft curves of the stylized figures. Mai Thu was a prolific artist, who found deep joy in portraying the lovely moments that he may have remembered occurring far away in his homeland.
  • Biography from Ivoire Nantes (Couton Veyrac Jamault)

    Mai Trung Thu, known as Mai Thu, was born in 1906 in Haïphong, Vietnam, into a wealthy family. He studied at the École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts d'Indochine and exhibited in Paris. Mai Thu settled in France in 1943, focusing on ink and gouache on silk, depicting family scenes and traditional Vietnamese themes. His work reflects a blend of Eastern and Western influences, showcasing his Vietnamese origins. The Musée Cernuschi in Paris is currently hosting an exhibition featuring Mai Thu and his contemporaries Lê Phô and Vu Cao Dam.
  • Biography from Millon & Associes

    Mai Trung Thu, born in 1906 in Rho-Nha, northern Vietnam, was a prominent Vietnamese painter known for his refined silk paintings depicting women and children in scenes of daily life. He studied at the Indochina School of Fine Arts and later established himself in Paris, where he had a prolific artistic career. Mai Trung Thu's works, characterized by a strong Vietnamese identity and a simple style, captured moments of intimacy and reflection with poignant precision.
  • Biography from Claude Aguttes

    Mai Trung Thu, an artist of the Indochina School of Fine Arts, evolved his style over the years, with simplification of silhouettes, rounder faces, and neutral backgrounds in the 1950s. This evolution continued into the 1960s and was particularly evident in his works from the 1970s, such as "Grand-mère" from 1976, which showcased a different vision of color with bright, acidic tones and a colorful palette highlighted by a blue-green background

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