Artwork Details

Bui Xuan Phai (1920-1988) is one of the four pillars of modern Vietnamese art. He is famous for his paintings of Hanoi Old Quarter and Cheo (Vietnamese opera) dancers. He is admired for both his art and moral character. He epitomises for the Vietnamese the lone artist suffering for his art. In the late 1950s he was blacklisted by the authorities for supporting a movement calling for political and cultural freedom. He was not allowed to show his works in public until a solo exhibition in 1984. He was posthumously awarded the Ho Chi Minh prize in 1996, the nation's highest recognition for an artist.

Phai did paintings and also drawings. His drawings often carry his distinctive trademark of certain quirkiness in them. The subject in this drawing is one of Phai's friends, a military Colonel in the army.