Story: Dam Duc Vu
Photos: Mai Anh Tu
A long-forgotten folk art is coming back to life in Hanoi.
Alongside Dong Ho folk paintings, which are associated with abundance and a rustic palette drawn from wet-rice culture, Hang Trong paintings carry a refined, urban character. Kim Hoang paintings stand out like a bright note of spring, infused with the lively spirit of festivals. Their yellow and red paper backgrounds evoke blessings, prosperity, and faith in auspicious, fortunate beginnings.
Yet those vivid hues, seemingly ever-present in the collective aesthetic memory, vanished for more than a century, plunging an entire line of folk painting into silence and oblivion. Kim Hoang painting flourished on the outskirts of Thang Long during the 18th and 19th centuries, only to be obliterated in 1915, when the Day River flooded and swept away all of the village’s woodblocks. From that point on, all that remained of this art form was a handful of fragmentary records preserved in the École Française d’Extrême-Orient and in scattered memories of earlier generations. Kim Hoang painting became a broken realm of memory, nearly impossible to reach, making it hard to imagine that one day, this genre might return as a joyful voice in contemporary art.
This return, therefore, is not merely the revival of an old craft but the reawakening of a red color imbued with profound symbolic power. In the hands of artisan Dao Dinh Chung, Kim Hoang painting has stepped beyond its role as a “Tet memory” to become a contemporary visual presence: vibrant yet restrained, traditional yet not nostalgic, familiar yet intriguingly new. For Mr. Chung, an artisan does not merely produce paintings; he keeps cultural memory alive in the modern world. His work moves beyond handicraft to become a form of creative practice and research.
First and foremost, Kim Hoang paintings gain their unique identity from the background material. The yellow or red of dieu paper is not merely a color, but an emotional state – warm, festive, and imbued with auspicious beliefs. Against this warm backdrop, familiar folk motifs appear both vivid and refined, like collective memories filtered through time and faith, stylized into symbols. Unlike the rustic simplicity of Dong Ho prints or the ornate, multicolored brilliance of Hang Trong paintings, Kim Hoang prints occupy a space between these two poles while retaining a distinct style: an artistic minimalism rich in philosophical nuance, a quiet concentration with psychological depth. Kim Hoang paintings do not tell stories or illustrate scenes; instead, they express auspicious values through a symbolic language, where the strong lines of woodblock printing merge with natural vegetal pigments to create a gentle harmony closely bound to the Vietnamese spirit.
When Dao Dinh Chung sought to restore this art form, he started almost from zero. There were no original woodblocks left to study, no master artisans to pass on the craft, and no clear technical framework to follow. Mr. Chung had only a few faded paintings scattered in museum collections, fragments of ethnographic records, and memories of red papers once hung on household walls in the days leading up to Tet. From these remnants, he and his collaborators patiently reconstructed an entire world that had vanished – a world that had to be understood through documents and felt through intuition. His work is neither purely the study of traditional art nor purely creative production, but an exploration of the borderland where past and present intersect.
Restoring Kim Hoang paintings, therefore, is not simply a matter of re-carving woodblocks or recreating old pigments. In Mr. Chung’s hands, each work becomes a visual experiment in which the spirit of the past is revived without rigid imitation. Through this sensitivity, Kim Hoang prints move beyond the confines of a Tet folk genre to form an aesthetic language capable of communicating with contemporary life. Many collectors are drawn to this elusive intersection: paintings that feel both classical and new, as if born in two centuries at once.
More importantly, the younger generation has reintroduced Kim Hoang art into modern life without stripping it of its soul. Mr. Chung’s works decorate interiors, are presented as cultural gifts, and appear in art exhibitions and applied designs. Wherever they are placed, they retain the unadorned character of a painting tradition tied to Tet, to fortune, and to belief. Mr. Chung understands the boundary between preservation and renewal: what must remain unchanged is respected absolutely, while what can be expanded is approached with a measured contemporary sensibility. He is not “modernizing” Kim Hoang imagery; rather, he is modernizing its context of reception, allowing the paintings to live on instead of being sealed in the glass case of a memory museum.
Reviving the red hue of Kim Hoang art is about more than reusing a traditional color. It is a declaration that culture can flourish when people are patient and sensitive enough to allow it to breathe again. In a contemporary world where everything is consumed and replaced at great speed, the reemergence of Kim Hoang painting reminds us that certain values appear most clearly when approached slowly – and that memories, once they find their storyteller, always discover a way to move into the future.
Kim Hoang painting has been reborn in a new position, helping us reconsider Vietnamese folk art as a multi-centered system, in which each painting tradition represents a distinct aesthetic variation: Dong Ho prints speak in a rustic rural voice, Hang Trong art reflects the urban spirit, and Kim Hoang prints carry the vitality of belief. When these pieces are brought together, Vietnam’s visual history appears richer and more complete. This journey reveals an essential truth: tradition is not stasis, but a current in motion; restoration is not about pulling the past back, but about opening the future from values that once stood on the brink of being forgotten.
