Other names and pseudonyms: To Van Xuan, To Tu, and Ai My. He was the son of a lower level civil servant belonging to traditional culture. After finishing the Indochinese College of Fine Art in 1931, he taught in Phnom Penh and Hanoi. After the victory of the August 1945 Revolution he became the first director of the College of Fine Arts of independent Vietnam. Although killed on duty during a French air raid (Dien Bien Phu campaign) one month before the signing of the Geneva Agreements, he had already trained several generations of artists.

Before the revolution he was well known as a singer of feminine beauty and knew how to enliven it through well studied composition and the use of simple and precise forms, the boldness of his symphony of colors which stand out against the timid of contemporary artists. His passion for the cultural heritage led him to join the national resistance with the working people who furnished him with themes for artistic creation. He devoted a lot of time promoting Vietnamese lacquer which, he thought, would open up a new way of painting.
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TWO YOUNG GIRLS AND A CHILD, oil on canvas, 102 x 77 cm, 1944
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MILITIA WOMAN, watercolor on paper, 32 x 49 cm, 1954
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