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Pouring bronze into the
mould.
One
of the 12 pieces
of the statue after the
cover frame is taken off.
Transporting the
sculpture to Dien Bien in the warm welcome of
the North-westerners.
| A grandiose monument was installed on D1 Hill in Dien Bien City on
the 50th anniversary of Dien Bien Phu Victory
(1954-2004), to remind the viewers of this significant historical event.
Generations of Vietnamese people will have a chance to enjoy this artistic
work while recalling the merits of their forefathers, who, half a century
ago, filled more glorious pages in the nation’s history.nbsp;
The
monument is 16.2 m high (the sculpture is 12.6 m and its base, 3.6m). It
was re-produced according to the original statue by famous sculptor Nguyen
Hai, which has been displayed at the Vietnam Museum of Fine Arts and was
awarded three national-level prizes. At present, it is the biggest bronze
statue in Vietnam.
After
officially being selected, the sample of Dien Bien Phu Victory statue was
further improved through four rounds of discussions by the Council of
Arts. On August 3, 2003, it was made with clay, at a scale of 1/1. At the
final check, General Vo Nguyen Giap and representatives of the Ministry of
Culture and Information, the Central Department of Culture and Ideology,
the Party Central Committee’s Office, and related ministries and branches,
contributed valuable comments, before it was cast.nbsp;
The casting
of this statue was undertaken by Nguyen Trong Hanh, Director of Doan Ket
Company Limited, whose head office is located in Yen Tien Village, Y Yen
District, Nam Dinh Province.
Over the
past 13 years of learning and working, Hanh has made thousands of bronze
statues of different sizes. The products made by his Doan Ket Company Ltd.
have been sold both at home and abroad, including to American and African
countries. However, when being entrusted to cast the Dien Bien Phu Victory
statue, the biggest one in the country so far, Hanh felt a bit worried. He
said that the
huge work
occupied his mind to the extent he lost sleep and forgot to take meals.
The statue needed 220 tonnes of bronze and 170 tonnes of iron and steel.
But the most complicated process was to pour the melting bronze into the
moulds. There were six furnaces working at the same time to boil the
bronze to a temperature of 1,560o C, and four cranes lifting the four huge
buckets to pour the boiling metal from the furnaces into the moulds under
strong pressure. Any mistake, even the smallest one, in making the moulds,
building the furnaces or pouring the melting bronze into the moulds, would
lead to an unexpected disaster.
Hanh
and his staff’s hard work has been worthily repaid. The huge statue,
consisting of 12 pieces (the largest one is more than 40 tonnes) was
successfully cast. It was transported over a distance of more than 600 km
of roads and rivers, and installed on D1 Hill in Dien Bien City, just
before the 50th anniversary of Dien Bien
Phu Victory.nbsp;nbsp;
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Designer of the Dien Bien Phu Victory
Monument
"Dien Bien Phu Victory"
Monument, the biggest bronze sculpture in Vietnam, was recently
installed on D1 Hill in Dien Bien Phu City, on the 50th anniversary
of the Dien Bien Phu Victory, as a symbol of the Vietnamese nation's
great victory. Sculptor Nguyen Hai is the designer of this work.
Born in 1933 in Tien
Giang Province, Southern Vietnam, at 14 Nguyen Hai joined the
resistance war against the French colonialists. In 1949, he was
moved to Battalion 307 to both fight and paint for its bulletin. In
1954, he went to the North and took a secondary course in fine arts.
Later he attended and graduated from the Vietnam Fine Arts
University, at the sculpture faculty (1958-1963).
Hai made the "Dien Bien
Phu Victory" sculpture in his final year at the university, which
was then bought by, and displayed at, the Vietnam Fine Arts Museum.
Since 1975, Hai has lived in Ho Chi Minh City.
Nguyen Hai is truly an
artist. In his works, there are some features of the soldiers of
Battalion 307, the liberality of the southerners in his native
place, and his artistic mind full of creativeness.nbsp;
Hai has made sculptures
for a long time, even during the war. So far, he has made many big
bronze and stone sculptures, including the "Mother Homeland", more
than 10 m high, a bas-relief of the 300-year-old Ho Chi Minh City,
the "Thu Khoa Huan" in My Tho (Tien Giang Province), the "Workers
fighting" installed at Junction Seven crossroad in Ho Chi Minh City.
He also made two statues, "Giong Saint" in 1972 - a legendary boy -
that marks a renovation in the sculptural language, and "Nguyen Van
Troi" - a hero in contemporary time - which fully expressed his
viewpoint on creation. These two works were greatly appreciated.
Painter Tran Khanh Chuong, General Secretary of the Vietnam
Sculptors' Association, wrote: "Nguyen Hai has more than 40 years in
sculpturing and a large number of sculptural works of high artistic
quality that marks a renovation in terms of sculptural language. He
is the only person graduating from the Hanoi Fine Arts University
after 1954, who has been conferred the Ho Chi Minh Award for
Literature and Arts by the State.”
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Story: Van Chuc, Duc
Hainbsp;nbsp;- Photos: Tran
Dinh, Van Chuc, Doan Ket
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