The nostalgia of famous painter Le Ba Dang through his notebooks

“Through his art, Le Ba Dang made humanity know his homeland and homeland in admiration. That mission is only for great souls, great talents. Of course, such people must be counted as very rare in each century!”

Those are the concluding lines of the article I wrote about him on the occasion of the exhibition commemorating the 100th anniversary of the famous painter's birth in Bich La Dong, Trieu Dong (now Trieu Thanh), Trieu Phong, his hometown on June 27, 2021. I thought that writing like that would be enough to say a relatively complete story about his career. It turns out that he is also a Quang Tri native with a heavy heart for his hometown people and life in his hometown.

Exhibition of painter Le Ba Dang in his hometown of Bich La Dong on the occasion of his 100th birthday - Photo: L.D.D

The silent yet bustling books

I found that melancholy when I first came across the notebooks when Le Hong Phuong, a nephew of his, brought them back from France to his hometown. Let’s read the first page of the notebook: “Quang Tri province is poor, with many people and little land. Most of the farmers do not have enough to eat. Small businesses. Off-season industry. So:

1. Must change the way of doing business. Must have spirit, initiative, courage to abandon old habits, boldly seek new ways of doing business.

2. In addition to farming and small-scale business, we must train skilled workers in all occupations using the mind and hands (arts) and search for and use available materials in the land and trees. See what materials are available and from there find teachers, bring in workers to train professionals, skilled workers and create furniture with a new spirit, new style, completely different from the existing items made in other places and other countries.

That way we will not have competition. Find an environment to trade with rich countries that lack new things. This is a sure way to live a more fulfilling life. Another aspect is to find every way to make Quang Tri province a beautiful place with rare things for domestic and foreign tourists to come and see. Create something special, it does not need to be grand and elaborate like China, France, Egypt...

The concern of how to help the people of Quang Tri go from poverty to wealth is also the thought that has been burning in his life. From a country boy who worked as a soldier in a foreign land, he made great efforts to both work in a factory and study Fine Arts at the Toulouse School of Fine Arts (France). And with the bonus for graduating as valedictorian, from Toulouse he went to Paris - the world's capital of light and art - to start his artistic career.

After marrying Mrs. Mysu, the couple had difficult and hungry days in a poor alley in Paris. To overcome that adversity, he painted Cat paintings and sold them to customers on the street “The Cat Fishing” to make ends meet. Those difficult days eventually passed, and Le Ba Dang’s horse paintings helped his artistic journey to “take off”.

But not only cats and horses, Le Ba Dang's creativity is boundless, so a painting term was born named after him: "lebadagraphy". Art critics have said very correctly about that creativity, that "The main motto explaining Le Ba Dang's extraordinary creativity is "not imitating anyone, not imitating himself".

In his notes, he still admitted that he had risen from poverty, through constant efforts to have a life that even the upper class French still dreamed of. But the personal material that he enjoyed from his artistic talent was a small matter to him.

How to help his hard-working villagers overcome poverty by creating products that can be sold for money and have a new life has always been a concern in his heart. Many of his thoughts and feelings are recorded in about a dozen notebooks that Mr. Le Hong Phuong just brought back from France.

After the death of artist Le Ba Dang in March 2015, at the end of 2023, his wife, Myshu Lebadang, also followed him to the land of white clouds on December 26. During their lifetime, they prepared the remains for their homeland with 60 boxes filled with paintings, souvenirs and especially his notebooks and sketches for posterity, especially with many thoughts on how to make their homeland Quang Tri more beautiful and rich.

Phuong said that he and his wife went to France and received 60 boxes of relics, but they could not bring them all back at once, so they had to sort them. The boxes of relics took up a large volume, and the room did not have enough space for them, so many boxes had to be left in the hallway. Every day, the couple opened a few boxes to sort them and then chose the appropriate means of transport. Some relics were sent back by air, while others were sent by sea.

Near the end of the trip, Phuong said that after finishing the 58th box of relics, it was too late, he was tired and exhausted, so he fell asleep. But as soon as he closed his eyes, as if he had a premonition, he woke up and went to the hallway to bring the last two boxes numbered 59 and 60 into the room to continue processing. The 59th box contained nearly 60 of his notebooks. It was lucky that he had not accidentally lost them (before that, a box of paints left by the artist had been lost)! Because he had tens of thousands of paintings, but these notebooks were the thoughts and feelings that for many years "he alone knew, he alone knew".

I have not read all of his notebooks, only accessed a part of those notes, but every time I close them, I hear the echo of the poem by Uc Trai Nguyen Trai: “The dust of an inch of old affection/Day and night, the tides are rolling” (bui: ancient word meaning “only”). The painter’s heart for his homeland and country is literally “Day and night, the tides are rolling”.

Deep love of country, love of homeland, love of people...

Every time I visit his house in Bich La Dong village, I always stop for a long time before the photo hanging solemnly in the house, taken in 1946, when he was sent by overseas Vietnamese in France to Paris to meet President Ho when he attended the Fontainebleau conference.

On that trip to Paris, he brought with him money that overseas Vietnamese had collected and sent back to the Fatherland during its difficult days. From then on, whether it was a journey of both artistic creation and hard work to make a living, or later becoming famous and wealthy, Le Ba Dang would always have a passionate heart for the Fatherland.

Famous painter Le Ba Dang (2nd from left) during his lifetime with young painters from Quang Tri and Hue who visited him in Paris more than 20 years ago - Photo: L.D.D

Let's listen to him talk about the difficult years of the country and how his works accompanied the country: "The war situation in my homeland led me to the image of my suffering compatriots and then brought me to "Unyielding Landscape" (1970) describing the road from North to South that the Western press praises every day.

In the deep and dangerous forests, on the mountains and under the passes, bombs and bullets are constantly present, everything is against humans. The climate is erratic, danger is everywhere, but people are still steadfast. The red blood vessels still innocently carve out paths, find ways to LIVE. These are the myriad trails of my country. This is not a political trend or faction, but an understanding of the trust, creativity, and courage of people of the same race who want to live, refuse to be slaves, and use all their intelligence, strength, and faith to fight against foreign invaders.

My people opened a trail from North to South with the intelligence and strength of the weak to find the meaning of life. I built the road with color and art in a high-rise building in the middle of Paris, then showed it off in many countries to show respect to those who did not spare their blood and bones for this road...".

Rarely is there a famous painter living in the midst of a prosperous foreign land who is attached to the country through art projects whose names say it all: Loa Thanh Tomb Garden, Truong Son Rice Grain, Giao Chi Footprints, Bich La Flower Village, Saint Giong Monument, Bach Dang Spikes... During the days when the country went to war, he had Consequences of War (1965), Indomitable Landscape (1973 - paintings of Truong Son and the Ho Chi Minh Trail).

This exhibition of the late painter Le Ba Dang is a meaningful activity to join the common atmosphere of the homeland to welcome the first Peace Festival held in Quang Tri. The works have traveled thousands of nautical miles from the splendid capital of France to the author's homeland for the first time and are displayed among the gardens and fields, once again telling us about his deep love for the Fatherland, for his homeland even though he has left this world to go to the white clouds.

Le Duc Duc

Source: https://baoquangtri.vn/niem-co-huong-cua-danh-hoa-le-ba-dang-qua-nhung-cuon-so-tay-nbsp-186726.htm