Painting By Thai Tuan, The Saigon District, 1959.

Oil on hardboard panel, signed and dated lower left. Signed, dated, and titled on the reverse. Dimensions: 58.5 cm x 42 cm. Sound paint layer. I note very minor losses: two chipped corners and two light scratches, none of which are serious. This painting depicts an old neighborhood in Saigon where refugees from North Vietnam settled in 1954, after the Geneva Accords. Thai Tuan and his fellow painters from the "Group of Four" settled there upon arrival and worked there. It was there that he painted most of his early works. Provenance: collection of Henry T. Zaphiratos, the renowned French writer and filmmaker, director in Saigon until 1959 of the "Thanos-Films" company. He met the artist at the 1959 exhibition and bought all of his available paintings at that time. A painting by Thai Tuan, of the same size and from the same period (1954), was sold at Sotheby's in Hong Kong on October 1, 2018. A great Vietnamese painter, Thai Tuan created a vibrant and nuanced body of work. Like his mentor Modigliani, he drew inspiration from the long faces and figures in the style of El Greco. Thai Tuan studied at the Hanoi School of Fine Arts in the 1940s and subsequently exhibited, notably in 1959, in Saigon with the Alliance Française in the salons of the famous Hotel Continental.