National Art Museum of the Rubublic of Belarus

Vietnamese National Picture

The exhibition presents the works of the middle and the second half of the 20th century from the collection of the National Art Museum of the Republic of Belarus.
The national picture (brightly-coloured popular print in a primitivistic style) appeared in Vietnam in the period of Chan Dynasty (1226–1400), by the end of the 19th – 20th centuries it became one of the main kinds of the national art. Such pictures were created in many villages in the Northern Vietnam. They were cheap and accessible to every peasant. By the middle of the 20th century the production of the pictures was concentrated in the village Dongho, Bac Ninh Province (earlier Ha Bac Province), where the original rural mode of the popular print was emerged. Pictures were printed for the greatest holiday – New Year according to the lunar calendar. They were called “chan tet” that means “New Year’s picture”. They looked like coloured graphic images printed on the special fibrous paper “kay zo” (was made of local raw materials – eagle tree, Aquilaria agallocha).

Minerals and herbals were used to produce paints: black colour was obtained from ashes, white – from dyp tree crust, red – from yellow stone, yellow – from Sophora flower, light blue – from Indigofera, and green – from copper rust. All members of the family usually produced popular prints. Wooden cliché and secrets of paints production passed on from one generation to another. Distinctive feature of popular prints from Dongho was coloured background that was made by addition of sticky rice water mixed with powder of crushed sea shells to a dye. Such original covering made paper more durable and sea shells powder gave shimmering.
Art stylistics of popular prints was traditional – the main part was assigned to clear contour line and bright colour spots. The composition was laconic – in the centre of the sheet were placed one or several figures (gods, people, animals or objects). Minor personages and details were skipped. Sometimes there were explaining inscriptions near a character or in the upper corner of the print. Popular prints can be divided into several subject groups: religious, wishes of goodness, protective, historical and literary. Prints displayed at the exhibition present a special group: they depict animal signs of the twelve year cycle (cock, pig, mouse, cat, dragon etc.) Genre print with scenes of village life (coconuts picking, tillage, and holiday procession of dragon) took

special place.
Hanoi type of picture is formed since the second half of the 19th century along with traditional rural popular print. It was coursed by the confluence of the national and classical traditions. City print, as a rule, had a form of picturesque scroll. Image printed from wooden contour cliché was supplemented with hand painting with natural or aniline dyes. Traditional motifs get the further development at the city picture: hieroglyphic inscriptions and wishes, refined compositions “Four Seasons”, “Birds and Flowers”. Considerable part of prints is series of two, four or six scrolls on the subject of popular literary works (“Legend about Tkhat Sun”, “Journey to the West”). City masters worked out a plot in detail dividing it into several episodes that illustrated the most important moments in life of the heroes. Poses and gestures of personages, details of interior and landscape created special mood and helped to understand the meaning of the depicted events.

Popular print involved wide circle of themes and became one of the most significant forms of saving poetic, mythological, and folkloric heritage of Vietnam.