Bui Xuan Phai, Vietnam (1920-1988), mixed media on silk. A lady with an instrument.

A Swedish diplomat who worked at the Swedish Embassy in Hanoi, Vietnam 1982-1985, the paintings were purchased directly from the artist. Other staff at the embassy also pruchased paintings at this time. Some of them were exhibited at an exhitition of this artist at the Östasiatiska museet in Stockholm.

The present lot by Bui Xuan Phai dated 1982 is a rare work as his abstract works and nudes paintings were forbidden from public view in Vietnam until 1990.

Revered as one of the most prominent modern painters of Vietnam, Bui Xuan Phai was the last generation of graduates from L'Ecole des Beaux-Arts d'Indochine (The Indochina College of Fine Arts). Together with Nguyen Tu Nghiem, Nguyen Sang, and Duong Bich Lien, they formed the 'Four Pillars' which greatly influenced later generations of Vietnamese painters as well as the development of modern art in Vietnam.

During the 1955 Hundred Flowers Campaign, a brief period of openness in North Vietnam, Phai supported an intellectual movement advocating freedom of expression and creative independence and was involved in other movements questioning the politicisation of culture. As a result, Phai lost his teaching position at the Hanoi College of Fine Arts. He was not permitted to present his artworks in public until a solo exhibition in 1984.