Styles and Techniques

Vietnamese lacquer painting represents a specialty of Vietnamese art that is held in high esteem in Vietnam, but almost entirely unknown in the United States. It can take 3 months for an artist to create one painting (100x100 cm) because the process is complicated and takes years to master. In fact, certain lacquer artists spend as long as 5 years on a single work. Unlike oil paintings on canvas, lacquer paintings are created on wood and apply a variety of techniques and materials including resin, eggshell, gold leaf, silver leaf and cinnabar. The Hanoi Fine Arts Institute (formally the Fine Arts College of Indochina) requires all students to attend courses on lacquer painting and has produced internationally exhibited lacquer artists including Nguyen Gia Tri, Nguyen Sang, Bui Ngoc Tu, and Dinh Quan.