We are proud to be your destination when traveling to Hanoi. We have Hanoi Gallery opened in 1993 located in the centre of Hanoi, Van Gallery opened in 1999 and Linh Gallery opened in 2002 located in the old quarter, the great pride of Hanoian.

We specialise at displaying lacquer paintings and oil paintings of the most famous artists in Vietnam. From Van Gallery and Hanoi Gallery, you will have an overview of the land and people of Vietnam in general and Hanoi from the ancient Thang Long to Hanoi in the modern time in particular. This is the right place for you to look for any information of Vietnam Fine Art History. Our customers are not only individuals but also large companies and enterprises who want to understand the real art of Vietnam.

You will find satisfactory due to our good service and insurance. We have door to door service and very good relationship with the most prestigious forwarding companies. All of our paintings have a certificate with the signature of artists to avoid copying.

It is our pressure to serve you. Please contact us

Director
Tran Thu Ha.

In Vietnam, trading in art works constitutes a specific part of the economy. This trading started in the early 1980s when there appeared a sign of the market economy. Behind an animated market in paintings with many successes is the fact that painting dealers have to make efforts to maintain and develop their trading. Today, it is more difficult for dealers to have a firm place in the Vietnamese painting market which has changed a log. Indeed, the Vietnamese painting market is professionalizing and internationalizing.

The Vietnamese painting market is a strange one. Initially, it was an oasis of small painting dealers who speak English, French or Russian. They mainly traded in small paintings with a low price. Their business activities in private mode with the State assistance were separated completely from regional and international painting markets, and essentially, they “gathered” paintings.

Learning by experience drawn from new practice, dealers in art works plunge headlong into an adventurous game in which some of them have much success and some of them suffer defeat. There is unaccountable number of art galleries which existed for a time. The cause of the disappearance of these galleries is the loss of dealers’ illusions about the “false” opportunities, but not the loss of “true” opportunities.

Trading in art works is a “select” trade, that is to say not all people can do this work. Looking back on the painting market over nearly 20 past years, the important thing of this trading is dealers’ “dynamism” – a popular word in the open – door period. Painting dealers who are independent and dynamic will be more successful than dealers who follow others. Thus, we can select among painting dealers some talent dealers who not only are able to face up uncertainty of the art market, but also constantly expand this market.

With a keen intuition and constant tactics “to act according to circumstances”, three galleries: Hanoi (since 1996), Van (since 2000) and Linh (since 2002), now joined together as Hanoi Van Linh Galleries, can be considered professionalizing and internationalizing galleries.

In theories, six years is not enough time for painting dealers, even talents painting dealers, to win their places (let alone the first place) in the Vietnamese crowded and competitive painting market. Especially, this period of six years is the “freezing” time because the Asian financial crisis arose. In this context, Hanoi Van Linh Galleries have over come all difficulties and become and exception by proving that infrastructure, financial ability, market share, business efficiency, manpower quality, prestige, and influence – all can grow at a great rate.

Maybe, Hanoi Van Linh Galleries are not yet perfect galleries, but they are of the most original and famous “cercle d’art”. In snug rooms of these galleries which are arranged simply in oriental style, we can meet and exchange views with each other and buy paintings – in similar style or in comparative style – of contemporary talent painters. And here, we are received with the rare courtesy of an art dealer. That is the spirit of a friend of art.

With a view to winning contracts on monopolizing circulation of works of some contemporary painters, Hanoi Van Linh Galleries are striving to perfect themselves.

On the occasion of the opening of Linh Gallery – “the third door” of Hanoi Van Linh Galleries, and on the occasion of New Year, a valuable book entitled “Twelve Vietnamese contemporary painters” was produced by Hanoi Van Linh Galleries in coordination with Fine Arts Publishing House.

The selection of 12 painters among thousands of contemporary painters is not easy. In their art field, the selection shows selector’s taste and innate character. It is difficult for selectors to prove that they are not “pure commerce” dealers.

Paul Cezanne, father of the modern art, wrote: “The taste is the best judge, but artists not only speak with a minority of people”. It can be said that owners of Hanoi Van Linh Galleries reconcile two clauses of this sentence with each other.

All the 12 painters included in this book are figurative painters. In their works, international modern elements lie in mean of expression, but not in results. These painters are skilled at using traditional elements, and their works are not formalistic. But they differ markedly in their way of turning ideas (from nature, life, memory or fantastic dream) into paintings.

In most of works in this book, poetic delight of rural landscape in the Red River Delta is expressed precisely and accurately. We can even feel this poetic delight as resonance when viewing paintings on the topic of urban landscape. These explain why gouache, oil or lacquer paintings by Do Son, Nghiem Xuan Hung, Nguyen Thanh Binh, Vo Ta Hung, Bui Huu Hung, Ha Tri Hieu, Dang Xuan Hoa, Le Thanh Son, Nguyen Van Cuong, Hong Viet Dung, Dinh Quan and Dao Hai Phong, are always appreciated by the public and dealers in the domestic and international art market.

This meeting of the 12 painters in this book shows Hanoi Van Linh Galleries’ great ability to gather painters round, especially in the context of a painting market not attaching special importance to the monopoly on selling art works.

Some art market critics and analysts said that if the Vietnamese painting market achieved many successes in the first stage, it was because international clients were very surprised at an original painting which was little known. And when this surprise has gone down, the golden light of the Vietnamese painting market is beginning to fail. This can be true, but in a limited aspect.

Truly speaking, clients were surprised at the then “naïve” art market: the price is too low, even the price of masterpieces is equal to that of works which are called “mass-produced goods”.

However, to attract clients, no dealer looks forward to clients’ surprise, even the surprise on the price. Dealers know how to create an opportunity and seize and opportunity.

Truly, art needs surprise. But as a French famous aesthete named Rene Huyghe said, only if we understand art will we love it.

Really, the Vietnamese painting has been overexploited without any supplementary for a long time.

Today, through introduction and promotion of Vietnamese fine arts inside and outside the country, Vietnamese collectors or dealers in art works show to some extent their obligations and responsibilities for national painting in which they put trust and to which they are attached with sentiments and rights.

No State and no country can patronize art completely. This has long been affirmed on a world scale. The art also needs other sources such as assistance from non-governmental organizations, multi-national organizations, sponsors, collectors, and dealers in art works. The Fine Arts Publishing House always supports ideas of social and economic classes for the publication of interesting books on Vietnamese fine art. This book of Hanoi Van Linh Galleries is such case.

Thanks go to Mr. Nora A. Taylor and Mr. Jorn Midellborg, two friends of Hanoi Van Linh Galleries, for their essays full of sentiments which are written for the book. Fine Arts Publishing House are delighted to offer the book “Twelve Vietnamese contemporary painters” to readers inside and outside the country.

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Van Gallery

Address: 13 Hang Gai street

Tel: (84-4) 8286 694

Mobile phone: +84 (91) 3224215

Facsimile: (84-4) 9289 053

E-mail: tranthuha@fpt.vn

Director: TRAN THU HA

Linh Gallery

13 Hang Gai (2nd floor) Hanoi, Vietnam

Tel/Fax: +84 (4) 9287013