[2] Subjects range from folk, academic and propaganda art, in styles that include but are not limited to socialist realism, cubism, expressionism and abstraction.
[2] Art works added to the collection after the organisation's creation were sourced from Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong Taiwan, Japan, France, Italy, Australia and the United States.
[3] Witness Collection includes art works by École des Beaux-Arts de l’Indochine founder Victor Tardieu[4] and his successor Joseph Inguimberty.
Using pencil, pastel and oils, Tardieu and Imguimberty created works inspired by Vietnamese communities and the natural environment in classical styles.
Art works by Bùi Xuân Phái and Nguyễn Văn Tỵ, for example, emphasise this influence through classical portraits, landscapes, urbanscapes and community scenes.
Collected artists Trần Văn Cẩn and Tô Ngọc Vân are considered two of the pioneering “Four Masters” of Vietnamese modern art.
[9] Tú Duyên, a student of the École des Beaux-Arts de l’Indochine until 1942, devised a new technique using only positive and negative woodblocks on silk or paper, adding colours by hand in what he called ‘hand-stamped printing’.
Conversely, it also hold pieces created with more care and forethought, such as the original, hand-drawn images meticulously crafted as drafts for propaganda posters by artists such as Nguyễn Thanh Minh.
Second generation art works in the collection reveal surprising realities of Việt Cộng soldiers, including how they ate, where they slept, where and how they traveled and how they sustained their ammunition, equipment and livelihood in remote regions.
Artists such as Phạm Lực were assigned field trips to northern border towns to paint and sketch Vietnamese defensive positions.
This era introduces a period of artistic experimentation where old techniques were utilised for modern subjects, and a form of social criticism previously unseen in Vietnamese art culture was born.
[17][18] Huỳnh Văn Thuận worked for the State Bank of Vietnam in 1953 along with artists Lê Phả and Bùi Trang Chước to create the first portraits of Hồ Chí Minh for the country's new banknotes.
[19] A cornerstone of the collection, works by journalist and war artist Phạm Thanh Tâm span not only documentary and propaganda purposes but also generational conflicts.
As a soldier in 351 Artillery Regiment, his sketches during the Battle of Điện Biên Phủ provide raw and intimate examples of the historic feats employed by the Việt Minh to ensure victory.
In his career as a soldier during the Second Indochina War, his satirical cartoons are examples of North Vietnam's alternative to America's psychological warfare, used to bolster the moral of communist troops while disheartening that of US and South Vietnamese forces.
At one time, he was assigned to the Tất Thắng newspaper in Military Zone 6, tasked with documenting the actions of units there in conflict with American air force bases and strategic hamlets.
Works by other artists in the collection, such as Bùi Quang Anh, Nguyễn Thành Châu, Nguyễn Thanh Minh, Nguyễn Đức Thọ and Vỡ Xương, to name a few, provide details covering many facets of PAVN and National Liberation Front (NLF) military life: journeying on the Ho Chi Minh Trail; living in the forests and mangrove swamps of NLF-controlled areas in South Vietnam; the contribution rural people and ethnic minority communities made to the war effort in the northern Tây Bắc region; front-line battles and the final moments during the Fall of Saigon.
[22] Gillian Osmond, Bettina Ebert and John Drennan, Zinc oxide-centred deterioration in 20th century Vietnamese paintings by Nguyen Trong Kiem (1933-1991), AICCM Bulletin, 2014, Australia.
[24] Bettina Ebert, Sally MacMillan Armstrong, Brian Singer and Nicky Grimaldi, Analysis and Conservation Treatment of Vietnamese Paintings, ICOM-CC 16th Triennial Conference, September 2011, Lisbon, Portugal.