Lecture on Alix Aymé - Aguttes

Alix Aymé, her research into lacquer work and her role at the School of Fine Arts of Indochina: from craft to an art in its own right

In this biography, based exclusively on authentic documents, Werner Gagneron retraces the adventurous, passionate and sometimes dramatic life of this great artist, who is still too little known. A student of Maurice Denis and of the "Ateliers d'art sacré", Alix Aymé (1894-1989) lived for almost twenty years in what was then known as French Indochina, and in the 1930s' worked at the School of Fine Arts in Hanoi. There, she contributed to the revival of lacquer painting, fascinated by this material that she described as magical, and gave a decisive direction to what was to become the national art of Vietnam. Tireless traveller, she visited China, Cambodia, Laos, Japan, Korea and even Manchuria. After her return to France in 1945, she continued to…