Bùi Xuân Phái
Quick Facts
Biography
Bùi Xuân Phái (1921, Hanoi - 1988, Hanoi) was a Vietnamese painter. He is famous for the paintings of Hanoi Old Quarter. He also painted the actors and musicians of Vietnamese opera.
The best known of all Vietnamese modern painters, Bui Xuan Phai is respected and admired for both his art and moral character. He epitomizes for the Vietnamese the lone artist suffering for his art: he lost his teaching position at the Hanoi College of Fine Arts in 1957 for supporting Nhân Văn affair a movement for political and cultural freedom and was not allowed to show his work in public until a solo exhibition in 1984. However, in 1996, he was posthumously awarded with a Hồ Chí Minh prize. Bui Xuan Phai unfortunately died in 1988, in Hanoi, the place of his birth.