In 2009, battling severe illness and sensing the twilight of his life, Vũ Dân Tân embarked on a deeply personal tribute to his father – the illustrious playwright and publisher, Vũ Đình Long (1896–1960). He painted a series of portraits, capturing the faces of the literary icons whose works his father’s legendary publishing house, Tân Dân, once brought to light. Rather than explicitly identifying his subjects, Tân planned an exhibition veiled in anonymity: the canvases would bear no names, only simple minimalist titles such as “Writer #1”, “Writer #2”, and so forth. It was to be a silent game of memory, an interactive riddle challenging the audience to unmask the authors hidden beneath the brushstrokes.
To mark the 80th anniversary of his birth, the Vũ Dân Tân Museum is opening an exhibition that the artist planned but did not live to see realized.