An Army-based artist, Nguyễn Cương joined the People’s Army of Vietnam in 1962, and spent most of his career in the various sections of the Army dedicated to communications. He also studied at the Vietnam Fine Arts College from 1969-1974, where he was a student of the lacquer painter Nguyễn Ðức Nùng, who was renowned for his use of lacquer in the field of Vietnamese Socialist Realism. The painting Information Girls is characteristic of the revitalized style in Socialist Realism developing after the Second Indochina War (1955-75), and especially in the early 1980s, when it became more dynamic, developed and experimental. Nguyễn Cương likely developed the drawing for the work in 1976, when he sketched “Female soldiers at the Information Station A40”, part of the Information Unit D76. This was based on his own military activity at the time, part of his long-standing work in the information and propaganda sections of the army. The work reflects the interest in monumentality of Vietnamese artists of this period. It contains large-scale and stylised forms, often overlapping and intertwined to capture the busy and complex machine work in the Information station. In its use of the lacquer, it expresses the variety of textures and layers available in the medium. The painting was awarded a bronze medal at the National Fine Arts Exhibition in Hanoi, in 1980.