Nguyen Tu Nghiem was known for his innovations in lacquer painting – an artistic medium practiced by Vietnamese artists since the 1930s. His distinctive works combined folklore and paeans of the countryside and ancient dance with the contemporary. Nghiem’s work vividly demonstrates the kinship and past histories between traditional Vietnamese culture and the spirit of western modernism. The dance gestures were greatly influenced by dinh sculpture, with the figures interlocked in motion, seamlessly unified as one entity. Nguyen Tu Nghiem is revered in Vietnamese art as among the great quartet, with the others being Duong Bich Lien, Nguyen Sang and Bui Xuan Phai, whom he studied together at the Indo-China Fine Arts College between 1941-1946, the 15th intake under Joseph Inguimberty, To Ngoc Van and Nam Son, and his graduating was delayed when the Japanese ousted the French in March 1945. Like Phai, he won the Ho Chi Minh Prize for art in 1996, but for the politically persecuted Phai, it was posthumous. He was the last of the quartet to have died, in 2016 (June 15) in Hanoi. Influenced by Nguyen Do Cung and To Ngoc Van, he won 1st Prize at the Salon Unique in 1944 for his Literature Temple Guard. He took part in the anti-French resistance war and land reforms in the early 1950s, and also taught art at the Viet Bac revolution base. He also taught at his alma mater and the Hanoi Industrial Fine Arts University.