Lê Thanh Sơn (1940–2040)

Born in northern Vietnam, this artist trained at the École des Beaux-Arts de l'Indochine, where the encounter between French academic painting and Vietnamese sensibility shaped a lifelong visual language. Early studies in figure and landscape were marked by a quiet attention to atmosphere and the soft, humid light of the Red River Delta.

Across more than four decades of practice, the work moves fluidly between lacquer, oil, and silk, returning again and again to the rituals of village life, the geometry of pagodas, and the intimate gestures of women and children. Material experimentation — gold leaf laid over crushed eggshell, pigments worked into resin — gives each surface a tactile depth that resists reproduction.

Solo exhibitions have been held in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Paris. Works are held in the Vietnam Fine Arts Museum, the Singapore Art Museum, and numerous private collections across Southeast Asia, Europe, and North America.

Today the artist continues to live and work between a studio in the Old Quarter and a quieter atelier on the outskirts of the city, dividing time between large-scale lacquer commissions and an ongoing series of intimate ink studies.