Born near Haiphong in 1906, Mai Trung Thu attended the French school in Hanoi. Just like Le Pho, Vu Cao Dam or Le Van De, he was in the first class of Indochina’s School of Fine Arts, which was founded and directed by Vincent Tardieu. Invited to participate in the 1931 Colonial Exhibition, Mai Thu discovered France, where he would remain from 1937 until the end of his life. Although deeply influenced by Tardieu’s and Joseph Inguimberty’s artistic teachings, he is the one artists among all his companions who most deeply maintained a Vietnamese identity. Quick to depart from oil paint on canvas, Mai Thu devoted himself to color or ink on silk, a typically Asian technique which allowed him to to develop an art that is rich in stylistic references and which otherwise recalls traditional Chinese and Vietnamese art.