Ngo Van Sac - Previous Sales

Born in 1980, Ngo Van Sac is a contemporary Vietnamese artist who graduated with an MFA from Hanoi Fine Arts University in 2008. Ngo Van Sac is well known for his pyrography (wood burning) portrait paintings. Each piece starts from a block of fresh, untreated wood, where the patterns in the grain suggest the subject. Using a charcoal pencil, he sketches the outline of the portrait(s). He then uses a blowtorch to create features, some subtle, others detailed. The sensitivity to shading and his keen aesthetic sense that seamlessly combines his portraits with the lines in the wood, coupled with his choice of ancient Vietnamese logographic poetry, is proof of his skill and often a tribute to both the individual within the portrait, and the history of Vietnam. Very few of Ngo Van Sac’s pieces don’t have a pair of piercing eyes demanding a response from the audience, asking them to look into the backstory of his subjects, to wonder about the histories, the lives and the souls that are captured exquisitely by Sac in his portraiture.