La Ba Quan

'Thinking' Figurative Expressionist Portrait Painting

2011

La Ba Quan is a Vietnamese fine art painter, born in 1976 in Nam Dinh Province. His subject of matter are human emotions, joy and sorrow, powerfully depicted in his distorted portraits. Quan graduated from College of Arts Nam Dinh at Nam Dinh province in 1999. After experiencing in various kinds of work, in order to gain knowledge and skill, Quan decided to come back and got his Bachelor of Art degree at Hanoi University of Fine Arts in 2005 in Vietnam. To enhance the methodology and logic and literary argument, he studied and got the Master of Fine Arts degree at Hanoi University of Fine Arts in 2010. La Ba Quan paints with thick layers of paint, often directly from the tube using a palette knife to achieve his result. Since 2005, he has been working on a series of portraits named The emotion of an old man. This series of paintings, as well as many of his other works, are inspired by his father who endured hardship and poverty during the war time. His paintings directly reflect on his life and his father's life, showing the admiration and gratitude towards his nation, which suffered the painful war period, and whose memories return in Quan's haunting portrait images. Focused on individual stories and personal conditions, he manages to narrate their living tales and paint their wordless misery, inner feeling and sorrow and sometimes, happiness.