Phan Kế An

Biography

For his portraits of Hồ Chí Minh in November 1948 Phan Kế An did not have enough materials, and he used whatever came to hand: charcoal, the burnt ends of cigarettes. He lived for three weeks in the Việt Bắc among Hồ Chí Minh’s advisers, and the result was about twenty portraits. They were printed in the December issue of the newspaper Sự Thật (“The Truth”). By the artist’s own account, he was the first to draw Hồ Chí Minh during the First Indochina War.

The commission came from Trường Chinh, General Secretary of the Party.

Phan Kế An was born on 20 March 1923 in Đường Lâm, then part of French Indochina (in modern terms, the area around Sơn Tây and Hanoi). His father, Phan Kế Toại (1892–1973), was a senior official: personal envoy to Tonkin of Emperor Bảo Đại, then Minister of Home Affairs (1945–1955) and deputy head of the government of North Vietnam (1955–1973). Phan Kế An studied at Bưởi school under Lê Thị Lựu, Tô Ngọc Vân and Nguyễn Tường Lân, and in 1944 enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts de l’Indochine in Hanoi. He did not graduate: like many of his classmates, he left to join the Việt Minh guerrillas. There he drew anti-colonial caricatures on walls in areas held by the French. By his later account, early depictions of communist leaders and soldiers risked severe punishment if the artist was caught, up to execution. In 1947, at twenty-four, he joined Sự Thật, the predecessor of the newspaper Nhân Dân, at Trường Chinh’s invitation. As commissioning editor he drew political cartoons aimed first at the French, later at the Americans and at the government of Ngô Đình Diệm. He signed them with the pseudonym Phan Kích. During the Vietnam War he went on painting pictures that condemned the American bombing of Hanoi.

In the winter of 1950, as a special envoy of the Việt Minh, he created the lacquer painting “Remembering the Northwest” (Nhớ Một Chiều Tây Bắc). The poet Đoàn Việt Bắc wrote a poem of the same name based on it, and music was later composed for the verses. I would call it the central work of his career: after it he was regarded as a master of lacquer. He also worked in oil.

His other works include “Thunderstorm Looms over Thanh Hoá Citadel” (first prize at the first National Fine Art Exhibition in Hanoi, 1946), “Hồ Chí Minh at Work in the Việt Bắc” (1948) and “Hanoi Christmas Bombing of 1972” (1975–1985). His works are in the collections of the Vietnam Fine Arts Museum in Hanoi, the Ho Chi Minh City Fine Arts Museum, the State Museum of Oriental Art in Moscow and the Witness Collection in Penang. In 2010 his works were shown in the exhibition “Realism in Asian Art”, organised by the National Gallery Singapore and the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea.

He also held posts in professional bodies: member of the Central Art Committee (1951–1957), deputy general secretary of the Vietnam Fine Arts Association (1958–1978), member of its executive committee (1957–1983), and later chairman of an artistic council and member of examination boards of the association (1983–1994). He received the Independence Medal Third Class, the Resistance Medal Second Class, the Anti-American Resistance Medal First Class and others, and in 2001 the State Award for Literature and Arts.

Phan Kế An died in Hanoi on 21 January 2018.