Huong Dodinh showing at Musée Guimet in late October 2021

Franco-Vietnamese artist Huong Dodinh is promoted by a platform established to support contemporary creation – known as CMS Collection - founded by Joanna Chevalier, Hervé Mikaeloff and François Sarkozy.

The first major exhibition dedicated to Huong Dodinh will be held at Musée Guimet from October 20 to December 13, 2021 – her work will also be displayed at the three-day art fair Asia Now.

27 Septembre 2021 - 22:00

Portrait Huong Dodinh © Khoa Dodinh

Largely unknown to the general public

The female artist Huong Dodinh remains largely unknown to the general public because her creative process of abstract work stems from an absolute commitment to her principles. Over five decades she rigorously questioned topics ranging from silence and the elements of line and void in an eternal quest for light.

Huong Dodinh who was born in 1945 in Soc Trang,Vietnam lives and works in Paris. On the fringes of the art world and market, she has created a uniquely refined, vibrant, spiritual and universal body of art. When her parents fled the war in Vietnam and settled in Paris, she was eight years-old. At a private boarding school in Rambouillet, she discovered the beauty of snow-covered landscapes that inspired her to begin painting with gouache.

Huong Dodinh, Canvas 74 in atelier, 196x138cm, Nov-Dec. 2006 © Droits Réservés

Further education

In 1965 Dodinh began her further education at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris where she pursued her studies. The turbulent events of May 1968 contributed to her acute awareness of the precarity and extreme violence of the outside world. The artist befriended some of the greatest artists of the 20^th century including Peter Matisse, Joan Mitchel, and Lisa de Kooning, while pursuing her quest for purity and light, drawing her lines and curves free-hand, inspired by pictorial techniques linking her country of origin to her adoptive home-land.

Huong Dodinh applies the technique of marouflage to her own canvasses, manufacturing all of the mineral pigments and natural binders used in her work herself. Drawing inspiration from a technique of Vietnamese lacquer, she layers multiple coats of paint to give her canvasses singular depth and density that does not absorb light but reflects it from within.

The artistic geometry that she creates reveals her personal perception of the world based on her experiences of life and inner emotions. She never felt the vital need to disclose her work to others, with the exception of close friends on rare occasions in the 1980s and 1990s, until she was ‘rediscovered’ in 2020 by CMS Collection.

Huong Dodinh, untitled 1992, 138x197x5cm © droits réservés

Presentation at the National Museum of Asian Arts Guimet

From October 20 until December 13, 2021, the National Museum of Asian Arts Guimet will present a selection of works by Huong Dodinh, curated by Hervé Mikaeloff. Her ‘oeuvre’ will dialogue with works from the museum’s permanent collection in two venues, Salle Champo and at the Hôtel d’Heidelbach.

In Salle Champo, visitors will find works produced following a trip by Dodinh to her native Vietnam in 1993. These are executed on coated paper mounted on wood and evoke her memories of the bay of Ha Long. Meanwhile the works that are exhibited at the Hôtel d’Heidelbach were produced over the past twenty years and selected from various series that reflect how clarity, density and transparency have defined the oeuvre of Huong Dodinh.

In parallel, work by Huong Dodinh will also be showcased at the Asia Now art fair, which runs from 20 to 24 October 2021 at 9 Avenue Hoche, 75008 Paris.

portrait of Huong Dodinh in her atelier © Jacques Habbah

Information about opening times of Musée Guimet and Hôtel d’Heidelbach

Musée Guimet :
6, Place d’Iéna, 75116 Paris is open every day except Tuesdays, from 10 – 18 hours – information available by telephone on opening days at : 0156525433
Hôtel d’Heidelbach :
19 Avenue d’Iéna, 75116 Paris is not always open, telephone information as above at 0156525433 every day except Tuesdays from 10 – 18 hours.