Teacher - Student:
Melodies of the Path Automatic translate

The Russian Academy of Arts presents the exhibition "Teacher - Student: Melodies of the Path", dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Russia and Vietnam. The exhibition will include about 90 works of painting, graphics, sculpture and decorative art by authors of different generations. The project tells about the spiritual and moral path of the artist’s development and his sacred connection with the teacher using the example of the works of the greatest Soviet and Russian masters, including members of the USSR Academy of Arts and the Russian Academy of Arts, and the work of their students - Vietnamese students who have studied at Russian universities from 1962 to the present.

The Vietnamese National School of Fine Arts has been formed over centuries under the influence of historical factors, local traditions, landscapes and the innate sense of beauty inherent in the peoples inhabiting this picturesque country. The appearance of the French School of Fine Arts of Indochina in Hanoi in 1925 for the first time introduced Vietnamese artists to Western-style painting, in particular oil painting on canvas, which found a sincere response in their hearts. During the short period of its existence from 1925 to 1945, 48 painters and 7 sculptors were educated there, many of whom became outstanding artists, teachers, and entered the history of world art.

However, against the backdrop of rapid changes in Vietnamese society and the growth of the national liberation movement, the problem of ideological discrepancies between the modernist aesthetics emanating from Paris and the ideas of Vietnamese independence from foreign rule, which required a new cultural policy and a plastic language for expressing these aspirations of the people, arose. Vietnam’s gaining independence in 1945 as a result of the August Revolution further increased the interest of the creative intelligentsia in the national artistic heritage of past centuries: lacquer miniatures, painting on silk scrolls, and the diversity of Vietnamese decorative techniques.

In 1948, the Second Conference on Literature and Art was held in North Vietnam, where the trajectories of Vietnamese culture at a new stage of history and its nationalization were discussed. Studying the experience of foreign countries, including the USSR, prompted the top leadership of the Communist Party of Vietnam to take the experience of Soviet socialist realism as the basis for building a new cultural policy. When diplomatic relations were established between Vietnam and the USSR in 1950, and, as a result, the signing of the agreements “On the education of citizens of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in higher and secondary civilian educational institutions of the USSR” (1955) and “On cultural cooperation” (1957), a full-fledged cultural exchange between our countries began.

One of the first Vietnamese students in the USSR was Ngo Manh Lan, who entered the animation department of the All-Union State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK) in 1956. During his years of study in the Soviet Union, he developed not only as a talented animator, but also as a painter. His series of pictorial sketches from the Russian hinterland ("Russian Architecture", 1958; "Russian Woman in National Costume", 19..(?)) reveal the rhythm and color scheme typical of ancient Russian cities.

In Vietnam, Ngo Manh Lan became a major animator, a teacher who taught more than one generation of students, and the author of works on the history and theory of Vietnamese animation art (Animated Cinema of Vietnam, 1977; Animation – the Eighth Art Form, 1999). Several generations of Vietnamese children grew up on his cartoons The Adventures of Grasshopper Men (1959), The Adventures of Kitten Miu (1970), The Talking Starling (1970), The Tale of the Bogatyr Duong (1973) and others. His daughter, Mrs. Ngo Phuong Ly, carefully preserved a number of his works and provided part of her collection for an exhibition in Moscow. Ngo Manh Lan’s ties with the Soviet Union continued for many years – in 1984, he received an associate professor degree in the USSR. He and his teacher, Ivan Petrovich Ivanov-Vano, had a long-standing personal friendship, which later inspired him to create the animated film Ave Maria (1972).

Meanwhile, in Vietnam itself, Soviet artists and sculptors began working at the Central Poster Workshop and the Art Institute in Hanoi. One of the key figures in Soviet assistance in the development of academic art education within Vietnam was Alexey Petrovich Kuznetsov, a painter, teacher, and director of the Leningrad Secondary Art School from 1952 to 1980. He spent two years in Hanoi (1960-1962), during which time he created a series of paintings, painted several portraits of President Ho Chi Minh from life (now kept in state museums in the country), actively participated in exhibition activities, and taught academic drawing and painting to a considerable number of students, the most talented of whom went on to study at art institutes in the USSR.

The largest number of gifted Vietnamese students in creative professions graduated from the Moscow State Art Institute named after V.I. Surikov at the USSR Academy of Arts (RAA) – their training took place almost continuously from 1956 to 2009. The institute graduated a whole galaxy of young Vietnamese artists and sculptors who were lucky enough to study with the greatest Soviet and Russian masters. B.A. Dekhterev, T.T. Salakhov, N.A. Ponomarev, M.M. Kurilko-Ryumin, L.N. Shepelev – this is far from a complete list of Soviet artists, academicians of the USSR Academy of Arts and the Russian Academy of Arts, who worked with Vietnamese students.

The first to come to the Moscow State Academic Art Institute in 1956 was Tran Luu Hai, who had just completed the course on "Anti-Colonial Resistance" at the Viet Bac Art Institute, and entered the workshop of theater and decorative painting under the guidance of M. I. Kurilko. Subsequently, Tran Luu Hai became one of the most prominent artists in Vietnam, an art reformer, a professor at the Hanoi University of Fine Arts from 1962 to 1989, and the chairman of the Art Council of the Vietnam Association of Fine Arts from 1989 to 1994. Dao Chao Hai defended his diploma work "Hero" in 1986 in the sculpture workshop of the Moscow State Academic Art Institute named after V. I. Surikov under the guidance of P. I. Bondarenko. To this day, he fondly remembers his teacher, following whose example he became a monumental sculptor, reflecting the heroic spirit of his homeland in stone.

The images of Vietnamese folk art, reflecting the everyday life of the Vietnamese and their system of symbols, smoothly flowed onto the Moscow canvases of students, acquiring a three-dimensional depth of space, a refined anatomy, being transferred to modern city streets and addressing modern realities, they preserved many principles of Vietnamese traditional art, such as the golden backgrounds in the diploma work of Tran Ngoc Van "Girls in National Dresses" (1991, directed by T.T. Salakhov), or the plot structure of everyday scenes from Dong Ho popular prints, alternating compositional-twisted elements of figures of townspeople, carts and houses with pauses of earth and sky, as can be seen in the work of Pham Thi Thu Van "Untitled" (2008, directed by V.N. Telin); scenes of life from fishing villages, typical of lacquer miniatures (polyptych by Nguyen Ngoc Dan “Days of Calm Waves”, 2009, director V.M. Sidorov; Dao Van Dung “Fishermen”, 1993, director L.V. Shepelev); field (Tran Quoc Thinh “Rice Harvester”, 2007, director A.I. Rukavishnikov) and arable work on buffaloes in the fields, reminiscent of the heroes of the Theatre on the Water “Boy on a Buffalo” or “Shepherd” (Nguyen Hi Khoi, series “Buffalos”, 1990, director N.A. Ponomarev).

A separate theme, directly or indirectly indicated, in the works of Vietnamese students was the theme of the path, which organically entered into the title of the exhibition. The path in the static space of the canvas is a poetic reflection of the movement of the artist himself and the entire nation towards self-improvement, spiritual development, and the precise coloristic transmission of the mood of nature emphasizes the meanings laid down by the authors (Phan Hoang Anh "Walk", "Street in Summer. South", 2008, directed by V.N. Telin; Truong Tien Cha "Evening", 2009, directed by E.N. Maksimov). The path as a dimension of achieving truth is present in all religions of Vietnam and Southeast Asia - Taoism, Buddhism, Caodaism - on the one hand, philosophical, heavenly, side. On the other hand, the earthly path, often distant, was the daily routine of millions of Vietnamese, many of whom traveled hundreds of kilometers to study. The most popular and monumental theme among Vietnamese artists is the heroic theme of the "struggle between Good and Evil", the struggle for justice and the invincibility of the Vietnamese national spirit. It is reflected both in paintings about the Vietnamese wars of the 20th century (Dao Trong Viet "The People and the Army Are United", 2010, directed by N.N. Solomin; Dao Chau Hai "Hero", 1986, directed by P.I. Bondarenko), and in works based on Vietnamese legends and tales (Nguyen Quan Vinh’s polyptych "The Tale of Saint Duong", 1993, directed by E.N. Maksimov).

Many Vietnamese students graduated from the I.E. Repin St. Petersburg Academic Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture at the USSR Academy of Arts (now the Ilya Repin St. Petersburg Academy of Arts). The institute has always been famous for its deep approach to historical, mythological and folk themes, the monumental scale of which is reflected in the works of students from Vietnam. The epic polyptych of Nguyen Dang Minh "Thach Sanh" (2025, directed by A.S. Zastavsky) tells the story of the strength of spirit of a young man who overcame many obstacles on the way to saving the princess; the triptych of Tran Tung Anh "Our Time" (2025, directed by A.K. Krylov) glorifies the image of matron Au Co and god Lac Loc Quan, who granted life and prosperity to the Vietnamese nation. A graduate of the workshop of Professor V.S. Pesikova, and now assistant-intern Tran Duc Minh, works in contrast with heroic themes. In her diploma work "Party" (2023), she shows the protagonist withdrawn deep into his inner world, despite the lively conversation, music and flashes of light around him. His loneliness among the crowd of people is emphasized through cold colors, the rhythm of the figures and the symbol on the wall - a traditional Vietnamese engraving depicting a carp.

For several decades, Vietnamese students also received an education at the Moscow State University of Art and Industry named after S.G. Stroganov. One of the most prominent graduates was Le Huu Thiep, who studied in the workshop of V.A. Ermolov, and then under M.A. Markov. In 1975, he defended a graphic diploma of several sheets on anti-war themes that had worried him since childhood. Like his student idol, the Italian anti-fascist artist Renato Guttuso, Thiep elevated the unbroken human spirit, crucified on the cross, to the realm of heaven, contrasting it with the tormentors of the people in the form of a cowardly crouching dog or jackal (Prisoners of the South Vietnamese Regime, 1972). A graduate of the monumental workshop of Khuc Van Thong, he defended his thesis in 1988 with mosaic panels on the theme of "Music and Dances of Vietnam" for the Children’s Complex in Hanoi. Today, MGUHPU continues to teach students from Vietnam within its walls. Le Thi Van Anh, a 4th-year student of the graphic arts department under the guidance of the leading Russian graphic artist A.I. Arkhipova, turned to the theme of "Alice in Wonderland" (2025), creating a series of illustrations and a cover design for the immortal work of Lewis Carroll.

The exhibition will show the fruits of long-term interstate cooperation in the field of fine arts between Russia and Vietnam. Educational programs have shown excellent results, raising more than one generation of Vietnamese artists with the strongest academic base and the widest range of theoretical knowledge in many artistic disciplines. The project allows us to trace how the national visual traditions of Vietnam were transformed under the influence of the Russian academic school into new realistic forms, and the close similarity of the universal values ​​of our peoples allowed the cultural exchange between students and teachers to develop into a strong friendship.

Information Department (press service) of the Russian Academy of Arts based on the article by the curator of the exhibition, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Arts K. Sopova.