Bui Xuan Phai – Uncorked Soul (by Jeffrey Hantover – Fine Arts American Critic)
Bui Xuan Phai, the man and the artist, remains a living presence in Vietnam, three years after his death from lung cancer in Hanoi at the age of sixty-seven. The most well known Vietnamese artist outside the country, Phai is the most respected and well-known artist within his own country, despite not being allowed has an individual exhibition until 1984. No one speaks ill of the man: most often he is described as modest, reticent, generous, independent minded, and above all else, a man of quiet dignity.

Nicknamed “Jesus” by his friends (he had many from all classes) for his beard and gaunt face, Phai may have also been given the name for his saintly f...