Portrait of a woman by Vu Cao Dam

Sculpture, the Vietnamese artist’s first passion, is the source of some of his masterpieces, including female statuettes created around 1940.

Placed under the banner of ancient and modern Far Eastern arts, the sale paid an initial tribute to Vu Cao Dam the sculptor… It was at the dawn of the 1940s, when he was living in France, that he began to model this series of intimate figures in clay or patinated plaster (see Gazette no. 2, page 101). A striking example of this is Femme assise, in terracotta, signed on the terrace, which fetched €51,250, more than double the high estimate. It reveals the influence of the small funerary statuary of the Tang period, dear to the artist, with its emphasis on the representation of women. Another star of Vietnam in themid-twentieth century, which was rich in talented artists: Alix Aymé, who lived and worked in Indochina in the 1930s, developing a modern approach to the art of lacquer. A panel by her, using this medium and eggshell, depicted a Pietà, which fetched €9 ,250 . Signed at the bottom, the gold-backed work bears a label on the reverse (54 x 43.5 cm). We went back in time with a third lot : a dark patina bronze group made in China during the Ming period, more precisely in the17th century. Pyramidal, it represents a dignitary surrounded by two servants holding offerings, and rests on a wooden base delicately carved with lotus flowers (h. 31 cm).