From Vietnam to the GDR – Memories of the artist Doan Thanh Rettensteiner

Doan Thanh Rettensteiner was born in 1950 in Vinh Phu, in northern Vietnam. From an early age, she showed a keen interest in and a talent for painting. At the age of eleven, she was admitted – as one of only seven selected children and young people – to the boarding school at the Hanoi School of Art, which was specifically aimed at particularly talented young artists. There, she received not only an artistic education: the school programme also included agricultural work, as the city was under constant threat from the war during those years.

Even in her youth, the artist gained a broad perspective on the world. She maintained pen-palships with children from the Soviet Union, China and the GDR. Furthermore, from 1965 onwards, the young artist’s works were regularly exhibited at youth exhibitions in Hanoi, Poland, the Soviet Union, China and the GDR. In 1973, Doan Thanh Rettensteiner began a distance-learning course at the University of Design in Hanoi, which she successfully completed in 1978. During the same period, she was admitted to the Association of Visual Artists of Vietnam. In 1976 and 1980, her works were also on display at the Intergrafik exhibition in the GDR.

In 1989, she finally moved to the GDR, where she initially worked as a group leader for Vietnamese workers at a textile factory in Zittau. At the same time, she continued to devote herself passionately to her art and took part in exhibitions, including at the Neugersdorf Local History Museum, the Löbau City Museum and the Kunstlade Zittau.

To this day, her painting is characterised by a deep connection to her Vietnamese homeland. Time and again, her works feature the landscapes, everyday life and, above all, the women of Vietnam. In this interview with ‘Art in Networks’, Doan Thanh Rettensteiner talks about her early artistic training, various exhibitions and her life in the GDR.