Fleurs des Champs

Le Pho's works presented here can be dated to his Findlay period (the name of the American gallery which got him and Vu Cao Dam to sign a contract of quasi-exclusivity starting in 1963): the artworks painted in France were specifically destined to a public audience of American collectors. The vivacious tones and lines characterize these oils on canvas. In fact, Le Pho himself told me that he would only paint freshly cut flowers placed in a vase, as if their fragrant smell and perfume was an essential element of their representation. Also, flowers and the beautiful depictions of women were two of the painter's great passions.

The leading Franco-Vietnamese artist of the 20th century, Le Pho started working with Wally Findlay Galleries in 1963, and his works began to gain a wide international audience. Painting with oil on canvas medium, his depictions of brightly coloured still life paintings and genre scenes of ladies and children in the garden can be seen as the artist's most accomplished and prolific works in this later mature period. He declared his Wally Findlay period works as the ones he was most pleased about.

Le Pho settled in France in 1937, after having first visited Paris in the early 1930s upon graduating top in his class from the Indochina Fine Arts School in Hanoi.

Considering Le Pho's Oeuvre, we can identify three distinct stylistic periods. The Findlay period - his last stylistic phase - dates from 1963 to his death in 2001, and is thus named because of his representing gallery, Wally Findlay Galleries, from USA. In 1963, Le Pho was approached by the famous American gallerist Wally Findlay, after being noticed for his exhibitions at the Romanet Gallery following the period after the Second World War. The gallery would come to have a great influence on Le Pho's work. The Findlay period marked Le Pho's shift towards producing works on oil and canvas, but continuing to paint his distinctively stylized Vietnamese women within verdant landscapes.

The Romanet period is charged with the loss of stability in human and international events: Le Pho's silk employed the same techniques as before but his colors shifted as if, through more intensity, the work needed to narrate instead of being just descriptive; the painter became more conflicted; the Confucian softness gave way to the harshness of the times. The memory of the war years, Nazi barbarism, combined with the state of civil war in Vietnam, the decolonization and its aftermath: so many questions troubled the painter who finally migrated to Paris for good in 1937. Romanet was the name of the French gallerist who always advised Le Pho and helped him exhibit his work for many years.

The collaboration with Wally Findlay bore fruit and Le Pho employed bright colours attesting to his long-lasting admiration for Matisse. This change also showed through the use of strong brushstrokes on large oil paintings, where this new strong colour palette was prominent. Le Pho seem injected with fresh energy in the Findlay period, and he demonstrated this by painting prolifically his favourite themes, such as his iconic flower bouquets. These works were often composed within idealized landscapes, where Le Pho articulated the ideals of beauty and love. In turn, Wally Findlay promoted his works passionately, and allowed his works to be collected by some of the most established collectors in the American market, which was a source of great delight for Le Pho.