New book explores art of war

A book featuring paintings and sketches, mostly of war, by former soldier and artist Huynh Phuong Dong has been released in Vietnamese in HCM City.
Huynh Phuong Dong – Visions of War and Peace, sponsored by American NGO Indochina Arts Partnership was earlier published in English in the US last November.
Dong is famous for his collection of over 20,000 sketches, silk, gouache, and oil paintings, as well as wood, plaster, and bronze sculptures.
Most of his works feature forests, the faces of soldiers and guerrillas, and battles and the hardships in a soldier’s life during the wars in Viet Nam between 1945 and 1975.
Published in Viet Nam by the Sai Gon Culture Publishing Company, the book with 107 sketches and art works – mostly the former – is a brainchild of C David Thomas, manager of Indochina Arts Partnership.
Thomas was in Viet Nam in 1969 as an engineer in the US Army. In 1987 he returned for the first time after the war and has since travelled to the country many times to research and promote cultural exchanges between the two countries.
He met Dong in HCM City during his first visit in 1987 and was fascinated by his sketches and paintings.
In 2000 he received a For the Cause of Viet Nam Fine Arts medal from the Government. Two years later, with funding from the Fulbright Program, he published a photo essay called Ho Chi Minh: A Portrait, which was received warmly in the US.
Thomas, now professor of Oriental Art at Massachusetts University in the US, marked his 50th visit to Viet Nam by publishing Huynh Phuong Dong - Visions of War and Peace last year.
Born in 1925 in Sai Gon, Dong joined the resistance army in 1945 after completing a five-year course at the Gia Dinh Fine Arts School. He spent nine years in battle in the south during the war against the French.
He left for the north in 1954 and joined Ha Noi’s Fine Arts College. After graduating from the sculpture department in 1963, he again left for the south where the war for national reunification had begun.
Many of his works are displayed at HCM City’s Fine Arts Museum and Military Museum.
Six hundred out of the 2,000 copies of the book will be sold in Viet Nam and the remainder in America for US$40 each. —VNS