“Cuu Long Giang Khoi Lua – Sketches and Poems” is an art book with sketches, watercolors, poems and letters by artists and soldiers created right in the middle of the battlefield during the resistance war against America. The book was compiled by Sherry Buchanan and Nam Anandaroopa Nguyen, translated into Vietnamese by Phan Thanh Hao.

These are the works of famous war artists such as Huynh Phuong Dong, Le Lam, Nguyen Van Tru, Nguyen Thanh Chau... The artists joined the cultural soldiers' army to support the southern battlefield from the early days, along with the art classes of the Central Office for Southern Vietnam in the old forests of Ca Mau, Tay Ninh, Dong Thap Muoi... opened amidst fierce bombs and bullets, in the basement, in the barracks. From Hanoi, they crossed Truong Son to the south along the Ho Chi Minh trail.

Painter Huynh Phuong Dong shared: "As an artist, I went to war to record the pain caused by war. My paintings record history through painting."

The artists have recorded the true and vivid images of the war through their drawings. They created their works during the war, under the rain of bombs and bullets, in dark bunkers, when enemy tanks were only a few meters away. Each work of art is also a historical record in pictures.

Not only that, the artists have realistically recorded images of soldiers' lives, the rear and the battlefield landscapes of the South from Tay Ninh, Ben Tre to Ca Mau during the period 1964-1975.

The book also introduces poems by Nguyen Duy and Le Anh Xuan, representative of resistance literature, such as the poem “Vietnam’s Posture” praising the sacrifices of the Liberation Army soldiers. The poems are interspersed with moving memoirs, diaries, and letters sent from the battlefield.

Author Sherry Buchanan is a journalist, curator and art researcher. She learned about Vietnamese resistance art through the painting “Girl, Guns and Flowers” ​​by Tran Trung Tin, and then happened to admire the painting “Crossing the Ba Thac River”.

She was so moved that she decided to embark on a journey to learn, collect and introduce to the world Vietnamese war art works. “Cuu Long Giang Khoi Lua - Sketches and Poems” is a result of that artistic journey.

Sherry Buchanan and Nam Anandaroopa Nguyen, a Vietnamese-American art researcher, traveled throughout Vietnam for nearly two decades (from 1998 to 2015), interviewing dozens of war artists, collecting sketches, watercolors, and unpublished documents.

“Cuu Long Giang Khoi Lua - Sketches and Poems” is a valuable source of information that helps the younger generation better understand the resistance war from an emotional, humane, and visual perspective. In terms of art, this is a unique visual heritage, recreating through lines and colors a tragic chapter of Vietnamese history.

Source: https://nhandan.vn/ghi-lai-lich-su-chien-tranh-bang-hoi-hoa-post876596.html