Bui Xuan Phai was one of the most remarkable
Bui Xuan Phai (1920-1988) was one of the most remarkable, most charming and most unusual figures of Vietnamese modern art. When he graduated from Frenchcreated Ecole des Beaux Arts d’Indochine in Hanoi (1925-1945), the world art was in its post-war period, one of drastic differentiation, Picasso, Mastisse, Leger already ranked among the classical masters. Europe gave full blast to the trend of lyrical abstractionism and America to that of expressionist one. All that was taken in by Bui Xuan Phai, by his heart’s eye. And be managed to find his own dimension in the strict framework of the society and later, his art, like an underground water spring, spread far and wide and even impregnated alien souls with his sincerity
Bui Xuan Phai(1920-1988)
There is an instant association between Hanoi and Bui Xuan Phai, encapsulated in the a popular expression “pho Phai” (“Phai’s streets”). Such easy linked familiarity between the place and its artist is evidence that Bui Xuan Phai is now considered Vietnam’s most significant and the most popular artist of urban space, and the recognized authority on painting the country’s capital. In this context, it is difficult to believe that only three decades ago the artist was criticized for these same paintings, whose sad grey buildings, deserted streets, and lonely, mournful passersby had been seen as insufficiently optimistic to fit the requirements of the socialist realism style promoted by the state. Today those same paintings have become a static model for hundreds of young Phai followers whose city is a utopia in the past—flat, schematic, unreal.
Meanwhile, the city of Phai, painted in its past, reveals the Hanoi Phai saw as he understood and cared to represent it. The illusory simplicity of his paintings disguise his complex approach to the city, where the city was not simply a subject to portray, but served as means to romanticize solitude. Thus these master works give the viewer an opportunity to pause within the city, in private, face to face, stimulating the desires of residents of the overpopulated city to experience similar feelings in reality, and thereby provoking acerbic feelings of nostalgia for a city many have never known.
Bui Xuan Phai (1920-1987) is probably the most well-known Vietnamese artist. He was born and lived all his life in Hanoi. He was a graduate of l’Ecole des Beaux Arts de l’Indochine (1941-1945). At the beginning of his artistic career he drew cartoons and made illustrations for Hanoi newspapers, worked for newspapers in the Military Zones, and later in the Cheo (folk opera) theatre. For most of his life he was an independent artist who worked intensively in his studio at 87 Thuoc Bac Street and left a huge art heritage among which the pictures of the ancient streets of Hanoi are the most famous. Bui Xuan Phai, whose name everyone in Vietnam now knows, had only one solo exhibition during his lifetime, and was allowed to go abroad only once-to Germany.
Some other producs by Bui Xuan Phai artist:
DC GALLERY 
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