Green Land captures Vietnam’s living landscapes
Six Hanoi artists turn to realism to reinterpret Vietnam’s landscapes, blending lived experience with inner vision to define the country’s enduring “green” identity.
THE HANOI TIMES — As the city welcomed the New Year, the Vietnam Museum of Fine Arts opened “Green Land”, an exhibition that frames Vietnam’s landscapes as a living, emotional terrain shaped by memory, labor and hope.
Hanoi’s Ngoc Son Temple and The Huc Bridge are depicted in Tran Thi Truong’s evocative painting.
Running from January 1 to January 5, Green Land brings together six Hanoi-based artists Nguyen Ngoc Binh, Dinh Thi Nguyet, Tran Duc Thuc, Nguyen Thi Hong, Nguyen Ba Thanh and Tran Thi Truong with nearly 90 paintings focused on still life and landscape.
Their works revisit familiar images of rice paddies, cultivated fields and fruit trees, yet they avoid nostalgia. Instead, they anchor Vietnam’s “green” identity firmly in the present, reflecting daily life as it unfolds.
This approach is intentional. According to artist Tran Thi Truong, who helped shape the exhibition’s concept, “green” extends beyond color. It represents a state of being, linking cultivated land with cultivated aspirations.
Within the exhibition, the green of lived experience blends with inner reflection, forming what she describes as a shared “realm” that absorbs the full spectrum of life rather than narrowing it.
A common idea does not produce uniformity. All six artists work from a realist foundation, yet each interprets it differently through composition, brushwork and narrative focus. These differences emerge most clearly through materials.
The opening ceremony of the "Green Land" Exhibition. Photo: Le Thieu Ngan
Nguyen Ba Thanh, the youngest artist in the group, brings the lightness and transparency of watercolor, while the other five artists remain devoted to oil painting, drawn to its depth and density.
Together, the works create a restrained dialogue between generations and techniques, unified in subject but varied in voice.
What binds the group most closely is discipline and training. All six artists received formal academic education and now work across different professional fields, yet painting remains their shared language.
This shared rigor gives Green Land a coherence that feels organic rather than staged, as if the exhibition grew naturally from years of parallel observation and sustained practice.
For Dr. Do Dinh Duc, Distinguished Educator and former Rector of the Hanoi University of Architecture, the exhibition succeeds by balancing individuality with collective vision.
Engaging with the works, he suggests, encourages reflection on responsibility toward life, toward the country and toward one another. The paintings invite contemplation through emotional resonance rather than direct instruction.
In a city that constantly negotiates growth and preservation, Green Land positions art as a quiet yet persistent witness. It affirms that Vietnam’s green beauty remains lived, evolving and deeply rooted in everyday experience.
A visitor to the exhibition. Photo: Vietnam Museum of Fine Arts
A lively corner of Hanoi comes to life in Tran Duc Thuc’s painting.
The legendary Hanoi Water Tower rises in Nguyen Bich Hong’s vivid painting.
