In Vietnamese painting, Luu Cong Nhan was a painter with the most sensitive soul, he was also a painter of the most sensitive life. His personality was very close to that of the Paris painters. For short periods he used to paint like a Modigliani or a Van Dongen, but actually very Vietnamese in terms of feeling and mentality.
During his life, Luu Cong Nhan always wished and strived to paint lively people, have the vitality of Renoir’s characters, allowing viewers to see them like “being present, standing, walking in the middle of life”.
The character in the painting is a young girl, possibly from a peasant background, but already a student, a teacher, a nurse, an administrative officer or an indirect employee. This beauty is genuine, natural, without style, without jewelry, bearing the bold “time” of a bygone era, and the artist had captured exactly the spirit of it, and also with just a few simple strokes, powerful, full of impulse.
The background, strangely enough, seems to be a “wall of earth”, soil mixed with straw plastered on bamboo, a typical building material in the old poor countryside, there were always straws and cracks, which the artist saw as pale reddish-brown flowers. From the shape to the color, it all comes from the warm heart of the artist, not only respecting and feeling for people but also respect and sympathize with people’s living environment and homeland.
