Exhibition «Ký ức những năm tháng không quên» (Memories of Unforgettable Years)

   A country coming out of war and rebuilding itself, told in oil, lacquer, silk and sculpture. For two weeks around National Day, Hanoi opens a route back into the 1950s–1980s, when construction sites, factories and rice fields were the biggest subject in Vietnamese art.

   The show gathers more than 50 works of painting, graphic art and sculpture, in materials ranging from oil and lacquer to silk, gouache and pencil. Most were made by artists working on site — in plants, workshops, building sites and state farms, from the deltas up into the mountains — which makes this closer to field observation than to illustration.

   Among the works on show:
— "Việt Bắc (đắp đường)" ("Viet Bac, building the road") by Đào Đức, painted in 1954
— "Tát nước chống hạn" ("Bailing water against drought") by Nguyễn Tư Nghiêm
— "Trên đồng cỏ nông trường Đồng Giao" by Tạ Thúc Bình
— "Gieo mạ - Gặt mùa" by painter and sculptor Huỳnh Phương Đông
— "Tổ lắp ráp nhà máy đóng tàu Hải Phòng" by Nguyễn Kao Thương
— "Học hỏi lẫn nhau" ("Learning from each other") by Nguyễn Đỗ Cung
— "Đan mũ" ("Weaving hats") by Linh Chi, painted in 1964

   It will reward anyone who studies or makes art, anyone curious why work from this period has been collected so hard in recent years, and travellers who want a quiet hour of context rather than another temple. The museum is in Ba Dinh, about ten minutes by car from the Old Quarter.

   Alongside the building sites and factories sits a quieter strand: lunch carried out to the paddy, a child feeding chickens, a woman standing and reading between shifts. Those small canvases say more about daily life in a society short of everything but serious about learning.

   The run is short — two weeks — so if you are in Hanoi over the holiday, give it a morning.