The Artist

1961 Hanoi Vietnam

Le Van Suu graduated from the Hanoi Fine Arts Institute in 1989 and then went on to pursue his studies and achieved his doctorate from the National Institute of Culture and Arts of Vietnam with his thesis on the painting quality in poetry and poetic qualities in Vietnamese painting. Suu went on to become the Deputy Head of Training Department at the Vietnam University of Fine Arts. Today he is the Director of the Vietnam Fine Arts University in Hanoi.
The artist exhibited locally and internationally in his youth but in recent years he has devoted himself to his teaching and directing the university.

Dancer 1998

This work of gouache on paper was created after a concourse in 1997 with the renowned artist Nguyen Cam, at that time the Director of Municipale d’Art Plastique de Sartrouville, France, who by invitation of the Vietnamese government gave a few contemporary art courses in Hanoi and HCMC at the Fine Arts Universities in Vietnam. Suu attended this course along with the young emerging artists Nguyen Minh Thanh and Nguyen Quang Huy and other fellow teachers at the university. The abstract composition and strong use of color shows a Western influence in treatment of the subject and yet the work retains a certain Asian asymmetry.