Once best known as a film actor, Tran Trung Tin took up painting in 1969 in Hanoi; after 1975 he returned to the small hamlet of An Binh outside Saigon, quit the film studio and Communist Party without explanation, and becoming a bus attendant, devoted himself to painting. He befriended Bui Xuan Phai who brought him paints and taught him how to prime canvas; though being poor, Tin primarily used photographic paper. "To tell the truth, I do not know how to paint.When Phai saw my first painting, Bi Kich Lac Quan (Pessimistic Tragedy), done in 1969, he said, "This guy throws away all of the books, so he is my close friend." Tin speaks warmly of Phai: "Phai liked me because I saw with the eyes of a child. I hadn't lost this vision through education." Infused throughout his works of childlike directness and innocence is an existential sadness that rebukes and trancends contemporary political and social reality. .
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