Lebadang (Lê Bá Đảng)
1921, Bich-La-Dong, Vietnam - 2015, Paris, France
Water Plants, 1970s
Original Hand-Signed Lithograph -
circa the 1970s
Artist Name: Lebadang (Lê Bá Đảng)
Title: Water plants, 1970s
Signature Description:
Hand-signed in pencil lower right, Marked with a calligraphic square blue seal in the plate lower left as well,
Numbered "100/170" lower left
Technique: Lithograph
Image Size: 29 x 29 cm / 11.42" x 11.42" inch
Frame: Unframed
Condition: Very good condition.
Artist's Biography:
Lebadang (French - Vietnamese, 1921-2015)
Lebadang was a Vietnamese-born
French artist best known for his densely textured mixed-media paintings of
molded pasteboard, limestone, and pigment on burlap or canvas surfaces.
Lebandang’s work often depict forms of horses, floral imagery, Vietnamese
villages, and other subjects, seemingly oscillating between abstraction and
representation a muted background.
Born in 1921 in Bich-La-Dong, Vietnam, Lebadang emigrated to Paris in 1939
where he fought in the French Resistance Army against the Nazi invasion.
He was subsequently captured and held in a prison camp, eventually being
released and going on to study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris.
Today, Lebadang’s works are in the collections of the Cincinnati Museum of Art,
the Rockefeller Collection in New York, and the Phoenix Museum of Art, among
others. Lebadangon died March 8, 2015 in Paris, France.
Lebadang was born in 1921 in Bich-La-Dong, a village along the Huong River
in Quang-Tri Province of Hue, Vietnam. He expressed himself through a variety
of media, including painting, watercolor, sculpture, jewelry and graphic works.
He often combined various media, creating sculptural, highly textured artwork.
Lebadang continued to create until
his passing despite being more than 90 years old. His wife, Myshu, said about
him, “Life is a sinking ship and work is a lifeboat.” This described her
husband perfectly.
“I don’t just use brushes to paint
on canvas, but mix pasteboard, paint and limestone and spread my works on large
pieces of thick burlap,” Lebadang once said. “So, my paintings usually look
rough and irregular in shape, but I think they are strange in a beautiful way.
It is often a marriage between different kinds of art, painting, and sculpture,
as well as installation art and architecture.”
He lived in Paris since 1939,
studying at the École des Beaux-Arts in Toulouse for six years until his first
one-man show in 1950.
He found his first marketable success painting hundreds of cats on ceramic
plates, still in high demand. Already an established artist by the 1960s after
starring in an exhibition at the Cincinnati Art Museum, Lebadang always strove
to create what was new and exciting. He created large-scale abstract oil
paintings with vivid blues and glowing puddles of orange and red. He sold to
tourists and collectors, quickly establishing himself as a serious artist with
never-ending creativity.
He also utilized pure foam board as
a medium, using a knife to cut out intricate designs. He placed the finished
foam between two pieces of glass, creating a frame that allows light to shine
through, producing ornate patterns and effects.
Painting and printmaking were
Lebadang’s most frequently used media but he also worked in terra cotta and a
variety of other media, such as “Vessel” (1994). Whatever he created, each
piece spoke to the entangled roles of man and nature.
In his 1981 “La Comédie Humaine,” he
wrote: “In my work, I use the circle, the magic symbol of life, to enclose
reliefs and landscapes. It symbolizes that nature is inseparable from man. Man
finds sustenance and spiritual nourishment in every source.”
The artist’s cast paper reliefs from
the 1980s demonstrated this power of the circular shape. The handmade paper he
designed was used as a pseudo-frame, ornately surrounding the paint and
symbolically playing nature. And while the human form was not represented
figuratively in his work until the late 1970s, he confirmed that man was always
present.
“Until now… it was a familiar shape,
a simple component in the universe but deprived of its human essence. […] Thus,
it is that my new work has evolved,” he wrote.
By examining paintings like his
untitled works of the 1960s – abstract, brightly colored, and almost ethereal –
one gets the sense that Lebadang’s memories were pushing through to the
surface. His oil paintings of the ’60s are ambiguous at first glance, yet the
faint outlines of boats, bridges, and horses gently float to the top. After his
shift in style, bringing definition to his paintings, these dreams were made
more lucid. Many of his figures become emotive and highly dramatic, this time
with visible faces. By the time he approached the 1990s, he demonstrated a new
pictorial theme that was topographical and textured. Mixing media, he painted
aerial scenes of mountains and oceans where the viewer was stationed in the
heavens. These paintings elaborated on man’s relationship to the natural world,
continuously presented as a flurry of memories.
Memories—objects that haunt the
entire oeuvre of the artist—are a familiar subject to Lebadang. From growing up
in Vietnam in the early 1920s to enlisting in the French Army for World War II
(even before he had learned French) and taken prisoner by the Japanese, his
experiences triggered responses to his past, present, and future.
“Art, in all its forms, whether literature,
philosophy, or the visual arts, expresses an attempt to understand the riddle
of life and helps lessen the fear of death,” he wrote.
From some of his paintings, it’s
easy to tell that Lebadang was inspired by a legacy of French painting, though
his work was more mysterious, cavernous, and delicate. But the French wasn’t
his only inspiration. Vietnam’s millennium under Chinese rule soaks through his
art: the mountains, the fog, and especially his square red signature provide
parallels to early Chinese painting. Lebadang’s “signature” acted as his own
logo and closely mirrored the calligrapher’s square red seal of a Song Dynasty
hand scroll. Their size, shape, and color are virtually identical.
After dozens of successful
exhibitions, Lebadang sent money back to Vietnam to rebuild his devastated
village, from the schools to the hospitals, until his village became the best
in the country. He was honored by the Vietnamese government with a sponsored
Lebadang foundation and museum, the first arts foundation in Vietnam. Splitting
his time between Vietnam and Paris, the artist claimed that one day he would
retire. But nevertheless, his creativity continued to flourish.
His work is exhibited in many public
and private collections, including the Cincinnati Museum of Art in Ohio, the
Phoenix Art Museum in Arizona, the Rockefeller Collection in New York, the
Foundation Museum in Kenya, the Lund University Museum in Sweden, the Loo
Collection in Tokyo, and the Museum of Arts and Letters in France.
Lebadang was honored with numerous
awards and accolades during his career. He also designed an award for the
International Institute of St. Louis.
The Lebadang Award is presented biannually to an individual who has
demonstrated extraordinary volunteer service. The award program was established
by the institute in 1989 to recognize organizations and individuals who
exemplify “Peace within you, your country, and the world.”
“My artwork is often strange but simple,” Lebadang once said. “So everyone can hopefully feel happy and relaxed, and that’s why they like them.”
Exhibitions (selection)
2019
2016
2015
2010-2014
2006
2002-2009
1997-2002
1991-1996
1990
1989
1987
1984
1980-1986
1972-1979
1966
1960-1963
1950-1958
Additional Information:
“An artist’s true wealth comes from the diversity of his creation” (Lebadang).
1921
Lê Bá Đảng (Lê, his
surname, Bá, his middle name and Đảng, his given name) was born on 27 June 1921
at Bích La Đông, (in Quang Tri near Huê, the former imperial capital of
Vietnam), into a family of fairly rich peasants. From 1950, Lebadang connected
the syllables of his name when signing. This became his signature for all his
works.
1921 – 1939
It was at Bich La Dông, his own village near Quang Tri in central
Vietnam, that he completed his primary studies. However, as soon as he grew
into adolescence he felt an urgent need to escape and travel to France. Still
under age, he signed up with “Indigenous Manpower” (Main d’œuvre indigène,
M.O.I) a branch of the French Ministry of Labour. His father was unable to
cancel his recruitment application and, with nowhere to turn, was forced to see
his son leave.
1940 – 1941
Recruited at Quang Tri on 16 October 1939, he boarded the boat at
Tourane (present-day Dà Nang) on 3 February 1940 and disembarked 47 days later
at Marseille on 20 March 1940 after an uncomfortable and testing journey. As
soon as he arrived he and his comrades were put in the new prison of Baumettes.
He was to be part of the force of “Indochinese workers” most of whom were
forcibly recruited by the French state at the beginning of the Second World
War, mainly to work in arms and munitions factories, replacing the French
workers mobilized into the army.
This period has been described in a
book which came out in 2009 by Pierre Daum (published in 2009 by Éditions Actes
Sud) “Immigrés de force : les travailleurs indochinois en France, 1939-1952”
(Forced immigrants: the Indochinese workers in France, 1939-1952). The book
also inspired a documentary film directed by Lam Lê (released on 30 January
2013) “Công Binh, la longue nuit indochinoise” (Công Binh, the Lost Fighters of
Viêt Nam). Both works mention Lebadang.
1941
After his time in the prison of Baumettes, he was sent to an arms
factory at Saint-Nazaire. He was to stay in the camps for 14 months, from 19
June 1940 to 28 August 1941. After two attempts to escape he succeeded in
joining his company in Camargue, where he worked with the group reintroducing
rice culti- vation there. He returned to the “M.O.I.” camp from Marseille,
where he thought he’d be in the free zone (although it was under Vichy since 10
July 1940), but, after an altercation with a French officer, he was sent to
Lannemezan disciplinary camp in the “Hautes-Pyrénées”. Once more he managed to
escape and reached Toulouse in the free zone. The artist rarely speaks of this
period which he described as horrific; the only exception being made for Pierre
Daum while doing research for his book.
1942
– 1948
Alone and without resources he survived for a time in wartime
France, and enrolled for a course in painting given by M. Espinasse and
sculpture lessons given by M. Manin at the “École des beaux-arts” (School of
Fine Arts) in Toulouse. In the sculpture studio he made a very lifelike bust of
one of his fellow-students and a bare female foot which already showed a
sureness of design and a control of volume. There, he was to find the real
France, the warmth of friendship, the solidarity and that French culture which
had always fascinated him. It was at the “Toulouse École des beaux-arts” that
he met Thérèse de Longueval who was to marry Professor Jacques Ruffié whose
Academician’s sword was to be designed by Lebadang in 1991. His situation
improved, and he started designing the notices for the “Opéra de Toulouse”
(“Britannicus”), and other cultural and sportive events.
1948
– 1950
In June 1948 he
gained his diploma and won a competition for designing advertisements. With
this money, he travelled to Paris. Lebadang left for Paris, attracted to the
city by its cultural effervescence. Those post-war years were a Bohemian
period, in the Latin Quarter, the rue du Chat-qui-Pêche and the rue Mouffard
which were the subjects of many paintings. He had a studio in the rue de la
Montagne-Sainte-Geneviève where he painted one of his first self-portraits in
oil, using a range of grey and blues on raw linen.
1950-1951
During the fifites
Lebadang held his first exhibitions, in Paris and in the provinces, which were
well received in the press.
Among the
Vietnamese community in Paris he met Myshu, an Eurasian, born Micheline Nguyen
Haï, on the 5 July 1929 in the Havre, who was to become his wife.
He drew from
memory, in Indian ink, the portrait of his father who had died in Bich La Dông.
After his departure in 1939, he never saw his father again. On 14 May the same
year his son, Fabrice, nicknamed Touty, was born.
He completed
some intimate paintings of women using a palette of browns and ochres over
large flat coloured surfaces as in the work of the painter Nguyên Phan Chánh,
but showing a greater dynamism and movement in the composition.
1952
The Galerie de l’Odéon in Paris held an exhibition with his work.
1953
In 1953, he completed a series of Indian ink drawings and washes,
gathered in a booklet entitled “Parfums de tous temps” (Perfume of All Times)
which evoked the nostalgia he felt for the countryside of his native land and
for his childhood. From then on Lebadang was regularly showing his work at the
Galerie de l’Odéon in Paris.
1954
From 1953 he began to draw cats using Indian ink illustrating the
sonnet “Les chats” by Charles Baudelaire in his “Fleurs du Mal”.
During 1954 he
used ink on paper to represent scenes from the Indochina War, in particular the
battle of Diên Biên Phu which ended the war. This series was shown as an
exhibition in 2014, in the Museum of Vietnamese History in Hànôi.
At this time,
drawings in Indian ink, enhanced by watercolour, showed scenes of daily life in
a fairly realistic style, something between a rough sketch and a life drawing,
in particular they showed Paris, the quarter of Montagne-Sainte-Geneviève and
the South of France, to Cannes, Cagnes-sur-Mer and Nice where he made regular
visits.
1956
The “Galerie de l’Odéon” in
Paris put on their third exhibition devoted to his work, which was also
exhibited in the “Galerie Au Seuil Étroit” opposite Notre-Dame in Paris. This minuscule gallery, just next door to the
bookshop Shakespeare and Company, founded by George Whitman, was lent him by
Roger Maria at the time artistic director of the “Théâtre du Lucernaire”. He
arranged it as an exhibition space. In particular, the gallery showed the
paintings of the Viennese artist Hundertwasser. An embryo of collectors began
to emerge around Roger Maria and become interested in the works of Lebadang.
M. Maestroni,
at that time director of the “galerie Cézanne”, organized his first exhibition
at Cannes. Fernand Dartigues, who followed the regional news for the weekly
“Cannes-Nice-Midi” and the Parisian review “Arts” and who wrote several
articles on Lebadang said that: “Le Ba Dang’s horses are born from movement and
light”.
1957
The Galerie Cézanne at Cannes put on his second exhibition.
1958
In Paris, he discovered lithography in the Arts-Litho studio, and
regularly attended the studios of Fernand Mourlot and Jacques Desjobert. He
held his third exhibition at the Galerie Cézanne at Cannes, and gave an
exhibition of his new works in the Galerie Au Seuil Étroit in Paris. In the
same year, the Château de la Napoule near Cannes organized an exhibition of his
works.
1960
In the
following years, galleries in Paris and in the French provinces hosted numerous
exhibitions (Galerie Pierre Hautot, rue du bac, Galerie Bonaparte, rue
Bonaparte, Galerie Fontaine, avenue Victor Hugo, Galerie Minage in
Montpellier). In the sixties, England (the Frost and Reed Gallery in London),
Germany, Switzerland (Leandro Gallery at Lausanne) and Norway (Spektrum Gallery
and the Lundt University at Bergen) welcomed his works, opening the way to the
United States and interested collectors there. He had his last exhibition at
the “Galerie Au Seuil Étroit” at Paris and new exhibition at the “Galerie
Sources” at Aix-en-Provence.
He published
his first portfolio, “Lebadang”, with Éditions Au Seuil Étroit with text by
Suzanne Tenand, including three colour lithographs on Velin Dambricourt and a
copy with six gouaches and six coloured lithographs on pearly Japan paper.
He had his last
exhibition at the “Galerie Au Seuil Étroit” at Paris and new exhibition at the
“Galerie Sources” at Aix-en-Provence.
1962
His work was shown for the first time in Germany at the Ina Fuchs
Gallery of Düsseldorf.
1963
He held showings at the “Galerie Mignon-Massard” at Nantes and at
the “Galerie Sources “at Aix-en-Provence.
1964
This was the year of “Huit chevaux” (Eight horses), his first
portfolio done in relief, without colours nor ink, on the poems and calligraphy
of Chou Ling who initiated his early research on the materials and techniques
of printmaking. The portfolio was made on paper from the Richard-de-Bas mill
with a sequel on pearly Japan paper. He also made oil paintings with «
calligraphed » texts in Vietnamese, like signs fixed against an abstract and
textured background. He would use the same form in the lithographs which he
would make for “La nature prie sans paroles” (Nature Prays without Words) after
a poem of Lao Tzu.
1965
Lebadang produced a large painting (120 x 700 cm) based on the
Vietnam War, which is now housed permanently in the Collections of the Lebadang
Foundation in Huê. It was the same year Lyndon Baines ordered aerial raids,
unleashing operation “Rolling Thunder”, and authorized the use of Napalm.
1966
The Cincinnati Art Museum, in Ohio, produced the first exhibition
dedicated to his work in the United States. In the same year he exhibited at
the Newman Contemporary Art Gallery in Philadelphia in Pennsylvania. He brought
out his first lithographs at Lublin Graphics, an editor in Greenwich in
Connecticut.
The paintings
of these years focus on Vietnamese legends, in particular the legend of
Tào-Quân or Ông Tao, the kitchen god or hearth genie. He used a palette of reds
and blues. He also began to paint boats and horses. The latter were to become
one of his favorite themes which he would modulate using several kinds of media
and different materials.
1967
He finished a portfolio of lithographs “La nature prie sans
paroles” (Nature Prays without Words) on a poem of Lao Tzu. Altogether there
were 16 lithographs in colour published by Weston Publishing, with text by
Madeleine Petit and printed on Arches paper by Guillard and Gourdon in Paris.
Each lithograph was immediately preceded by a page of callichromy. The two
pages were linked and related one to another in a ceaseless exchange.
Lebadang
finished two paintings which were like a foundation or matrix of his future
work. The background was divided into several surfaces or facets, clear or
dark, a point or a line, a luminous point which seems to lead the gaze to a
connection which separates and structures the picture. The background is
textured with something fluid, then rubbed and wiped with a cloth. Above, the
forms, drawn with light touches, look as though they are intertwined and appear
to come out of the background. The first painting shows a tree under an orange
moon, the second is a horse galloping through a twilit landscape. The palette
is orange and red enhanced with white and yellow for the light colors and
browns and black, with blue, for the dark colours.
For the first
time, in the bottom right hand corner of the picture and above the signature,
the artist placed a little colored rectangle, like the seal of an oriental print.
1970
This year was
under the sign of the print. Lebadang brought out several porfolios of prints
with some new and innovative techniques: relief engravings, embossing, etching
on an embossed background, lithographs on doubled Japanese paper, lithographs
and reliefs etc.
The print
workshop of Bernard Rémusat in Mougins near Cannes became the experimental site
for Lebadang’s prints. With patience, talent and an understanding of the
results Lebadang sought, Bernard Rémusat did test after test on the old hand
press. The dies for the relief engravings were often too hard and tore the
paper. The work had to be recommenced until both men were satisfied, as mutual
agreement between artist and printer was essential. The lithographs took up the
artist’s themes: horses, flowers and boats, landscapes. Relief engravings were
abstract landscapes which anticipated his important series “Espaces” (Spaces)
in 1985.
Between 1970
and 1973, he completed a series of paintings “Paysage indomptable” (Indomitable
Landscape) on the theme of the Vietnam War. The paintings are in black and
white in the style of Chu Ta, but in a more heightened style, with the
movements of the brush appearing like calligraphic signs, combining image and
language with flashes of light, displacements of material, flows of colour,
projections, with the paint erased representing abstract landscapes where the
Hô Chi Minh trail is shown as a red line. War landscapes.
The artist
sometimes arranges the landscapes as polyptyques with a predilection for a
four-panel form. In these monochrome paintings, with the motif, the painted and
empty areas, the seal and the signature contribute to the equilibrium of the
composition.
1972
An exhibition at the Galerie Fontaine in Paris and a second
exhibition devoted to his work at the Frost and Reed Gallery in London.
The monochrome
black and white paintings of the “Paysage indomptable” series are sometimes
traversed by ochre or yellow spots in large “sweeps” or by a red dot, a sharp
point, a blue mark like a scratch and the red line, continuous or dotted,
representing the Hô Chi Minh trail. In 1972, “Operation Linebacker II” had
aimed at the destruction of the North Vietnamese infrastructure so as to force
North Vietnam to negotiate and sign the Paris Peace Accord which took place on
27 January 1973.
The same year
he completed a lithograph (56th notebook) on a poem of Paul Eluard “L’extase”
(Ecstasy) for the book “Hommage à toi, France”, a collective work
including 62 French-language poets from Charles d’Orléans to Pierre Emmanuel
with illustrations by artists and a preface by the historian and art critic
René Huyghe. Lebadang’s illustration is a “female landscape” between Odilon
Redon and Hans Bellmer.
1973
During the negotiations on the Paris Peace Accord, he asked M. Lê
Duc Tho, the chief negotiator with Henry Kissinger, to bring him back some
debris from the B52s so that he could make painted sculptures, heads of horses,
human profiles, hands, birds, symbols of peace.
The last
paintings, in black and white, of the series “Paysage indomptable” (Indomitable
Landscape) are accompanied by “calligraphed” texts in Vietnamese, as in his
paintings of 1964. He started working on a new series of horses in armour with
the bard of neckline and the breastplate as decorative elements. The palette is
dominated by reds and black, with a very accentued drawing that gives a lot of
volume. They are sculptures-paintings.
1974
In 1974, at the
“ArtExpo” in New York, he met John “Jack” Solomon, the president of Circle Fine
Art Corporation, who, at that time, directed several art galleries throughout
the United States. Jack Solomon founded Circle Fine Art Corporation in 1964,
which notably represented Victor Vasarely, Erté, Norman Rockwell and Yaacov
Agam. For Lebadang, this led to a series of exceptional exhibitions all over
the United States.
The Circle of
Fine Arts has at its disposal two large print workshops in New York and
Chicago, and one jewellery workshop at Scottdale in Arizona where Lebadang
produced his artworks. To these sites he brought Bernard Rémusat, his faithful
print expert with whom he ran all his print-making experiments.
He received a
commission from the glassmaker Daum for three molten glass sculptures, one of
which, “Le repos de l’étalon” (The resting stallion) was to be shown at the
French Embassy in New York in 1980 as part of the exhibition “Pâte de verre –
Sculpture”, with works by Paloma Picasso, Salvatore Dali, André Lhote and
César.
He completed
“Ten Horses”, a portfolio of lithographs in quarto super royal. All the plates
are engraved on stone, lithographed and embossed by the artist himself.
The writer,
Georges Conchon, wrote a text on Lebadang which appeared in the Éditions d’Art
G.R.G. In this he spoke of that special light in Lebadang’s paintings calling
it “metamorphosis of the naked” referring to François-René de Chateaubriand and
Louis de Fontanes where the subject itself, the boats, the horses, the
suspended water, tropical nature, are like a “metamorphosis of light”.
“The junks and
horses which fill the paintings of Lebadang make me think of “the little
figures floating in air” which Chateaubriand described on a Greek vase showing
the corpse of Hector dragged by the chariot of Achilles in which Fontanes
taught him to recognize “a metamorphosis of the naked, through which the
ancient Greeks liked to see the soul” (Georges Conchon).
He held
showings at the Düsseldorf Art Fair in Germany and started a series of
exhibitions with Circle Gallery throughout the United States, in New-York, Chicago,
San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego.
1975
He exhibited at the Art Fair in Cologne in Germany.
The fall of
Saigon on 30 April 1975 marked the end of the Vietnam War. He departed
immediately in search of his family which had been scattered in the camps.
There, he provided financial assistance to the reconstruction of his village
and planted trees in the area which had been ravaged by chemical weapons.
1976
He composed the portfolio “Fantaisies Suite” (Suite of Fantasies).
The end of the
Vietnam War allowed him to return to a country that was still devastated.
He created a
large abstract painting (220 x 800 cm) representing a large landcape between
the mountains and the sky, in black and white, with a dominant of blue, to
which he added three spots of red colour (a dot, a line, the seal) which with
the signature underline the horizontal composition. This work, characterized by
its tendency to abstraction and a greater freedom, may be considered the
completion of the series “Paysage indomptable” (Indomitable Landscape), the
format requiring large strokes and a fluidity of the medium.
In the same
year, a large painting (114 x 648 cm), composed of four separated panels,
continued the series of the portfolio “La Nature prie sans paroles” (Nature
prays without words). Those four panels represent calligraphies against a
background of mountainous landscapes which illustrates the history of Vietnam.
The palette is predominantly red-orange with earthen colours and ochres,
counterbalanced by yellows and blue.
1977
He worked on the portfolio “Fleurs Série” (Series of Flowers) and
exhibited at the Galerie Pierre Hautot in Paris, large oil paintings
representing sexualized orchids in strange-looking shapes displayed in a range
of blue and purple. The subject of the vase and the twig appears in blue
compositions.
1978
He designed the set and costumes of the opera “My Châu – Trong
Thuy” by the Vietnamese composer Nguyên Thiên Dao under the musical direction
of Marius Constant at the Opéra de Paris (Salle Favard), whose general director
at that time was Rolf Liebermann. For Lebadang “a piece of scenery is not
necessarily a static illustration of an opera sequence”. He seeks the mobility
and the illusion of life on the stage in a minimalist set where the colours
create a touch of life. The libretto recounts the Vietnamese legend of the
Citadel of Cô Loa in the kingdom of Âu Lac and of Princess Trong Thuy’s tragic
destiny
“As in my painting, I search first for a general tone, to which is added a
layer of colour, a layer of light. For “My Châu – Trong Thuy”, I wanted, above
all, to create a unity between the music, the legend and the scene.” (Lebadang)
In the same
year, he performed “Lebadangraphy”, a set of serigraphs using a “technique of
gilding” that he developed in the studios of Circle Fine Art. He also achieved
screens. In these serigraphs, the superimposing of the layers produces a unique
silken material in which the thickness of the inking and the transparency and
the opacity of the colours have been worked upon.
“I tried to
achieve a sumptuousness of harmonies over the total surface of the plate by the
optical vibration and the superimposing of the colors, not by their
accumulation.” (Lebadang)
The paintings
return to the same subjects with variations: flowers and twigs in a vase,
moonscapes, landscapes with rowboats seen from above, trees in the storm with a
limited palette and a more fluid material close to a wash. When he exhibited at
the Contemporary Art Fair in Basel in Switzerland, from 14 to 19 June 1978, his
friend Marcel Salinas, a painter and lithographer, wrote in the catalogue “A
propos de fleurs” (About Flowers):
“The recent
series of prints reveal a new dimension of the lithographic texture and this
invention is the result of the active research that Lebadang incessantly
undertakes. In this way he developed a new technique of printing using two
sheets of paper, one of them being transparent, whose open texture interacts
with the printing of the sheet below and conveying to each the appearance of a
piece of coloured embroidery.” (Marcel Salinas)
1979
Many personal exhibitions are organized by Circle Gallery in
New-York, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco and Denver. Paintings about the
same subjects become increasingly abstract with a very dark palette dominated
by blues and black.
1980
The death of his son deeply affected him and left him in a deep
crisis. He created a grave of stainless steel whose surface reflects the
surrounding nature, the trees and the sky. A mobile displaying the Yin and Yang
symbol moves with the wind and flutes allow the air to pass through it. On the
surface of the grave the artist has sculptured scenes from daily life. The grave
is to be found at the Cimetière du Montparnasse (Montparnasse Cemetery) in
Paris.
“By creating
his grave, I let his soul hover in reflection where the sky and the clouds, the
birds and the trees are brought to life, moving with the figurines that
represent his life and making it perpetual like the Yin and Yang, the Void and
the Full.” (Lebadang)
“shadows and
reflections”, poem by Mireille Gansel:
on the grave of
purest steel
the trees and all their seasons
the skies and all their variations
and on the moveless waters of the absence
the shades cut out in a dance of clarity
tears of rain in drops of light
white flowers
and grey ashes of the incense sticks
in the early morning
on the way to his studio
the old painter comes to the grave of his child
shadows and reflections
soul of his art
He exhibited at
the Circle Gallery in Chicago and at the Clayton Art Gallery in Saint Louis,
Missouri. In Germany, the Genner Gallery at Duisburg and the Wonderbank Gallery
in Frankfort held exhibitions of his recent works.
After having
lived in France for more than forty years, he acquired French nationality.
1981
Lebadang started working on “La comédie humaine” (The Human Comedy)
referring to the work of Honoré de Balzac and representing his own view of the
human condition. This considerable group of works consists of drawings,
watercolours, paintings, etchings, lithographs, collages and sculptures. It is
made up of dreams and recollections, of images inspired by nature and
landscapes of his country in which Lebadang places human figures and scenes of
daily life. According to his writings, he narrates in his work the past, the
present and the future, joy and sadness, the innocence of childhood, the ardour
of youth and old age, a combination of serenity and anguish.
A series of exhibitions
with Circle Gallery in Dallas, Los Angeles and Houston, at The Owl Gallery in
San Francisco, at the Walton Street Gallery in Chicago and at the Gallery in
the Square in Boston
The seal, at
first a coloured square or rectangle, becomes a red square with three figures
within it representing the family and from now on it appears in all of his
works.
He realized
wooden sculptures representing figures, the couple or the family (the father,
the mother and the child). The sculptures have little depth and are performed
in direct cut technique with hollows, holes and borings, full and void. They
resemble paper cut outs, but in three dimensions. They are not meant to
represent human anatomy or shape. They are silhouettes.
1982
Several exhibitions held by Circle Gallery in New-York, Pittsburg,
San Diego, San Jose and at Northbrook, Illinois. In the same year, Lebadang
exhibited at the Carolyn Summers Gallery in New-Orleans, the Cherry Creek
Gallery of Fine Art in Denver, the Old Olive Tree Gallery in Scottsdale,
Arizona, the Pavilion Gallery in Portland, the Ludeke Gallery in Cincinnati and
the Pioneer Square Gallery in Seattle.
1983
A series of exhibitions at the Circle Gallery in Chicago, San Diego
and New-York. The Promenade Gallery of Woodland Hills in Los Angeles exhibited
his recent works.
1984
In the studios of Circle Fine Art in Arizona he started creating
his artist’s jewels, which he named “Art to Wear”, golden pieces of jewellery
with pearls and precious stones that prefigure, in miniature, the “Espaces”
(Spaces).
Another series
of exhibitions with Circle Gallery in Houston, Northbrook (Illinois), San
Francisco, San Jose and Miami as well as at the Pionner Square Gallery in
Seattle, the Congress Square Gallery in Portland and the Gallery in the Square
in Boston.
1985
He started on what was undoubtedly to be his major work, the series
of “Espaces” (Spaces). There are works on paper combining various techniques by
using collage and superimposition, mid way between sculptures and bas-relief,
like a synthesis reaching beyond these two forms of expression. Lebadang uses
paper made especially for him at the Moulin de Larroque (the Laroque Mill) at
Couze, in Dordogne, a pure handmade rag paper extremely thick, which he tears
up by hand and joins together in superimposed layers so as to obtain a landscape
with “relief”, a landscape seen from the sky. The “Espaces” (Spaces) are
monochrome, white or black. At that time he is interested in the aerial views
of the geoglyphs of Nazca by the American photographer Marilyn Bridges. He sees
in them a bond between man and the cosmos.
“And, looking
closely at it, Lebadang’s work seems moon-like, silently lunar. Open spaces
that one observes from height, where the hills and hollows of the terrain
reminds us the « Terra Incognita » of the first explorers. As if this where the
kingdom of spirits, the refuge of the memory of the dead. Upon first glance, a
work where the eye sweeps across glacial and desert landscapes, where only an
expanse of blue makes us suspect the presence of a lake or a glacier. Between
the serenity and the silence before the storm Lebadang is becoming the
architect of nature.” (François Nédellec, curator, museum of La Castre, Cannes)
“Lebadang is a
wise man, and one who knows what is not made with time is neither retained by
it. And so he makes, or rather reconstructs, landscapes and continents in the
image of the models he assembles.” (François Nédellec)
Exhibitions
with Circle Gallery in New-York, Chicago, New-Orleans, Pittsburg and Los
Angeles, at the Cherry Creek Gallery of Fine Art of Denver and the Promenade
Gallery of Woodland Hills in Los Angeles.
In the same
year he began working on a extensive series of watercolours representating
nudes in a landscape where the landscape becomes the body and the body, the
landscape. The palette is blue with touches of red.
He created
another large painting (100 x 1060), an abstract composition, a vast landscape
seen from above which is crossed by a horizontal line that seems to link four
entities resembling immersed territories with three dominant of colours :
ochre-yellow for the left side, blue-green for the center and purple for the
right side.
1986
A series of exhibitions with Circle Gallery in New-York,
Northbrook, Chicago and San Francisco.
1987
A series of exhibitions with Circle Gallery in New-York, Chicago,
Los Angeles, San Diego, Saint Louis, New-Orleans and Seattle
During the
opening of an exhibition at New York’s Circle Gallery, Lebedang made the
acquaintance of Marc Squarciafichi who was then living in Japan and already
owned many of his art works. Marc Squarciafichi became Lebadang’s agent and
introduced him to Japan where he welcomed him to his studio in Izumano-Shi near
Osaka.
Exhibitions in
Osaka, Tokyo, Kyoto, Nagoya and Ashiya where he showcased an important set of
relief engravings with embossed technique on paper, “Espaces” (Spaces) on paper
with inserted relief engravings or etchings, which he included under the title
“Au-delà du graphisme” (Beyond the Graphic).
1988
Exhibitions in the United States, Japan and Germany.
1989
In the United States he received the Prize of “The International
Institute of Saint-Louis”, given by the city of Saint Louis. On 25 January
1989, it was awarded to him by Mrs Margie May, who, together with her husband,
Mr Morton D. May, were the donors of the Max Beckmann collection of the Saint
Louis Museum.
1990
He took part in the International “Art Fair of Tokyo”
(International Tokyo Art Expo) and at the “Kyoto Art Expo”. A series of
exhibitions took him to Yokohama, Nagoya, Osaka, Kobe and Ashiya.
1991
He was commissioned to release the academician’s sword for
Professor Jacques Ruffié in collaboration with the smelter Pascal
Arthus-Bertrand.
“Meanwhile,
Dang’s reputation does not cease to grow. Considering his talent and our old
complicity defying time I suggested to him to sculpt this sword.” (Jacques
Ruffié)
He was
nominated Honorary Citizen of “The City of New Orleans” on 13 April 1991.
He organized a
rural exhibition in his native village at Bích La Đông in order to honour the
memory of his father and his ancestors.
1992
He was nominated “International Man of the Year” in Cambridge in
England.
Lebadang
travelled to India, where he met his friend Ruby Palchoudhuri who introduced
him to the painter, Paritosh Sen in Calcutta. Later, Lebadang invited him and
Ruby to Cannes where they took part in the Festival of Avignon for “the Year of
India”. These meetings led to his first exhibition in India, in 1996, at the
Birla Academy of Art and Culture in Calcutta.
1993
The works he created in this and the following year are further
variations of the series “Espaces” (Spaces) composed of black paper which the
artist repainted in blue and white.
1994
In Paris on 16 June 1994 Lebadang was appointed “Chevalier de
l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres” (Knight of the Order of Arts and Literature)
by the French Minister of Culture, Jacques Toubon.
1995
Many exhibitions are organized in Germany at the Herburger Gallery
in Saarbrücken and at the Ostendoff Gallery in Heidelberg.
The painted
“Espaces” (Spaces) became mobiles painted on both sides and hung up. Their
basic material consists of paper made more compact by collage, superimposition
and the addition of sand. The shapes are cut out and painted with figures or
hollow shapes. The colours range from blue to black always including a red dot
or line.
1996
The Birla Academy of Art and Culture of Calcutta organised his
first personal exhibition in India. The exhibition presented painted “Spaces”,
structured paintings and relief engravings with embossed technique on paper.
His friend Ruby Palchoudhuri and the painter Paritosh Sen wrote the preface for
the catalogue.
1997
A regular spectator at the Festival of Avignon and Aix-en-Provence,
Lebadang discovered, while on an excursion, the quarries of the mediaeval
village of Baux-de-Province, where the works of artists are projected onto
limestone walls.
On the request
of Anne Plécy, the director and co-founder of the “Carrière de Lumières”
(Quarry of Lights) in the medieval village of Baux-de-Provence (formerly called
“Cathédrale d’Images” where Jean Cocteau filmed scenes of the “Testament
d’Orphée” and which was used for giant image projection), Lebadang created a
huge “Espace” (Space) of 300 m² by more than 10m high in this natural
environment and in the immense galleries excavated in the rock stratum of the
“Val d’Enfer” (Hell’s Valley). The exhibition intitled “Espace Lebadang” (Space
Lebadang) was exceptionally open to the public until 2002.
“The material
used to create the works was composed by the artist, he attempted to integrate
it as closely as possible into the substance of the quarry walls in order to
preserve the magic of this unique place.” (extract from the catalogue)
Myshu Lebadang
inserted the following text by Roger Caillois in the catalogue of the
exhibition reflecting the mineral environment made of limestone that served
Lebadang’s works as a precious box:
“Writings in
stone: structures of the world. The vision captured by the eye is always poor
and uncertain. Imagination enriches and completes it, with the treasures of
memory and of knowing, with all that experience, culture and history let it
discern, without taking into account what imagination itself invents or dreams,
if necessary.” (Roger Caillois, “L’Écriture des pierres”. Skira, 1970)
2002
Period of the “Yeux” (Eyes). Interlacing of lines, swirls, planets
or expanded galaxies or images of the cosmos, eyes are traversed by a red line.
Sometimes, they are circumscribed in a box, the edges of the box are the edges
of the canvas..
After a journey
to Angkor Vat, he began the “Bouddha” (Buddha) series, large portraits where
Buddha’s face, with the eyes closed, seems to emerge from a silken and flecked
material made by « dripping » and projections in light passes merging into each
other. The dominant colour of the paintings is blue. Some are sepia brown on a
white background. He was to continue this series until the period of the
“Cosmic Family” (Cosmic Family) in 2010.
Exhibition at
the Hô Chi Minh City Museum in the city of Hô Chi Minh and participation at the
Huê Festival.
2003
After an interval of more than 40 years without any exhibitions in
Paris, the Parisian Gallery VRG showed his recent works.
Continuation of
the “Bouddha” (Buddha) series with figures calligraphed as characters in a
poem, who adopt once more the attitudes of the fi es of “La Comédie humaine”
(The Human Comedy).
2004
He held a one-man show at the Bijutsu Sekai Gallery in Tokyo
Mai Courtot
held a personal exhibition of Lebadang at the Galerie Hoa Mai in Paris. The
works exhibited were “Espaces” (Spaces) in the form of mobiles, painted on both
sides and hung, the paintings being highly structured and characterized by a
mixture of materials and of painting techniques. Hybrid works combining several
characteristics ranging between sculpture and painting.
2005
Second presentation of his works at the Bijutsu Sekaï Gallery in
Tokyo.
2006
Inauguration, in the presence of the artist, of the Fondation d’Art
Lebadang (Lebadang Art Foundation) in Huê, Vietnam. The Foundation was
established with the support of the authorities of the city of Huê and of the
province of Thùa Thiên-Huê. It permanently keeps and exhibits more than 400
works by the artist representing more than 70 years of creative work.
During his stay
in Huê, he created several sculptures representing Buddhas and figures made
from wood from Vietnam and stainless steel. The empty spaces and the holes
correspond to hollow figures. Certain sculptures are steles of figures engraved
and sculpted as bas reliefs.
Lebadang
practised the art of paper-cutting, between void and full, which allows light
to shine through like a shadow theatre. He illustrated a song-legend of the
Hmong people, “L’aimée de la rivière noire” (The Beloved One of the Black
River), published by the Editions Alternatives and translated by Mireille
Gansel. The illustrations consist of people and animals cut from paper that
reproduces patterns of Hmong textiles and represents scenes of daily life in
the mountains of the north of Vietnam.
2007
Third exhibition at the Bijutsu Sekaï Gallery in Tokyo.
2008
He participated once more at the Huê Festival.
2009
Exhibition at the “Fondation d’Art Lebadang” (Lebadang Art
Foundation) in Huế.
The “Cosmic
Family” series contains his latest works. Mainly oil on canvas in dominant of
blue as well as diptychs representing the family and birth, with the
omnipresent figure of Buddha.
During another
stay in Huê he continued his sculptural work. Back in Paris, he created vases
of erotic forms in terracotta. Others represent the grain of rice that he
considered to be a form of habitat.
2010
He participated at the Huê Festival.
He returned to
the Buddha figure with eyes closed and to that of the child with exceedingly
large eyes, wide open. Certain dreamlike paintings are among the “Espaces”
(Spaces) with open eyes that seem to hover between earth and sky, and with the
face of Buddha in filigree.
In his last
painting (a triptych of 130 x 291 cm) of the “Cosmic Family” serie, in red and
yellow ochre with shades of brown, he returned to his initial palette in a more
purified style consisting of dripping, projections and rubbings in a light
material that vibrates and breathes.
2011
The National Museum of Vietnamese History in Hànôi organized a
major exhibition of his works.
2012
On the occasion of the publication of the book “L’art de la
découpe” (The Art of Paper Cutting) published in the Editions Alternatives
(Gallimard), in which the artist is mentioned, two large cut outs were
exhibited at the “Librairie du Centre National d’Art et de Culture Georges
Pompidou” (Library of the National Centre of Art and Culture Georges Pompidou)
in Paris.
2014
A stele in memory of the 20 000 Vietnamese workers requisitioned by
France during the Second World War was inaugurated on 5 October 2014 at
Salin-de-Giraud in the Camargue. The association M.O.I. (Mémorial pour les
Ouvriers Indochinois – Memorial for the Indochinese Workers) was the project
supervisor. The work realized following an original model by Lebadang, which
reproduces in wired form the posture of the Vietnamese farmer walking to the
rice fields, with a hoe in his hand. By employing the technique chosen for the
stele, made up of flattened parts, it is not possible to represent the initial
volume and the wired appearance of the original model
Mme Shimizu,
director of the Cernuschi Museum (Museum of the city of Paris for the Arts of
Asia) contacted Lebadang regarding a possible donation.
2015
Lebadang passes away on 7 march 2015 in Paris, at the age of 94.
The funeral ceremony took place under the dome of the Père Lachaise Cemetery in
Paris. Several ceremonies were to be held in Vietnam, in his native village
Bich La Dông and at the Lebadang Art Foundation in Huế.
His wife Myshu
Lebadang made a donation to the Cernuschi Museum notably an important set of
works on paper reflecting the artist’s extensive research and technical
innovations in the field of printmaking. The donation includes 33 prints, a
portfolio of 17 lithographs, 2 watercolours and 2 paintings.
The documentary
fi titled “Lê Bá Dang –Tù Bich La Dông dên Paris” (Lê Bá Dang – From Bich La
Dông to Paris) directed by Dang Nhât Minh was screened in Huê and at the cinema
“La Clef” in Paris on 19 September.
2016
The documentary film titled “Lê Bá Dang – Tù Bich La Dông dên Paris”
(Lê Bá Dang – From Bich La Dông to Paris) directed by Dang Nhât Minh was
screened at the Fukuoka International Film Festival 2016 in Japan.
Myshu Lebedang
returned to Hue for the Foundation’s tenth anniversary.
From 2 November
2016 to 5 March 2017, twenty works by Lebadang were exhibited amongst the
recent acquisitions of the Cernuschi Museum, highlighting the donation made by
Myshu Lebadang to the museum’s collection.
2018
Publication of the book “Genesis”, a set of 46 drawings made in
Indian ink in the 1960s represents the evolution of species according to
Lebadang.
In the 1960s,
Lebadang made a set of 46 drawings in Indian ink, which he called “Genesis”.
The assembly is a fold-out book (leporello). The format is almost square. There
is no text. The front cover is lined in black cardboard and for the back
stitched in silk.
On the
production of the book, 46 drawings have been reproduced. The assembly is
faithful to the original. A bilingual text has been added. The cover and a
sleeve have been redesigned.
Book printed on
white offset paper of 170 gr, limited to 200 copies and numbered from 1 to 200.
Genesis
“Genesis”. Genesis. γένεσις.
World in
perpetual evolution.
Morphological transformation. Transmutation. Expansion.
Body ever-becoming.
This set of 46 drawings
made in Indian ink in the 1960s represents the evolution of species according
to Lebadang.
We start from
the protozoan form. It is followed by suspended amoebae, ordered like a
Mendeleyev periodic classification table recalling certain “mental landscapes”
by Henri Michaux or the “musical scores” by Pierrette Bloch who sublimates the
contrast between black and white.
This evolution
is neither linear nor progressive. It moves from the embryonic state of the
first semi-animal and semi-organic forms towards more elaborate forms and, at
times, returns to the molecular world or to earlier stages. Some drawings show
animal metamorphoses as if there had been a shift from animal to human.
A
hybridization of bodies.
This organic
“phylogeny” which passes through dance and movement — swirls of shapeless
matter crossed by strong winds or shakings ; bacchanals, an orgiastic space
where bodies mingle and burst — marks the different stages of procreation or
sexuality.
The drawings of
“Genesis” prefigure “La comédie humaine” (1981) in reference to the eponymous
work of Honoré de Balzac, which represents the human condition according to
Lebadang.
From genesis to
human.
Luc HO (31
October 2017)
2019
On April 21,
Myshu Lebadang inaugurated the “Lebadang Memory Space” at Kim Son near Huê in
Vietnam. It is housed in a contemporary style building and was designed and
built by the architect, Hô Viêt Vinh. Its shape evokes Lebadang’s “Espace”, and
its multi-levelled terraced roof forms a stage where cultural activities and
shows can take place before a superb panorama. The park is decorated with
sculptures, the whole effect responding to Lebedang’s desire to reunite nature,
humanity and art.
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