“Collecting art works or antiques or anything else is a pleasure born of love and passion. In other words, that is something related to karma. And since it is related to karma, it must be a predestined vocation.

Tran Hau Tuan is blessed with that predestined vocation. As a teenager, he met Bui Xuan Phai, adored that old man who so generously gave him small-size paintings of his. This fostered in him an ever growing love for art which gradually became grafted to him like karma.

And this is irrevocable. And he grew even more infatuated with every passing day. So, his collection is not just limited to Phai’s work which symbolizes the suffering and nostalgia for old-time Hanoi, that poetic and pathetic Hanoi of millenary civilization, but also treasures other values – Nguyen Tien Chung’s Eastern quietude, Nguyen Tu Nghiem’s poetry and traditional modern style, Nguyen Sang’s mighty and profound emotivity, Duong Bich Lien’s lonesome monologue, Tran Luu Hau’s warmth and veiled voluptuousness, Luu Cong Nhan’s fancy-free unconstraint, Tran Trung Tin’s anguished innocence, Thanh Chuong’s ethereal vibrations, Nguyen Quan’s dismembered forms and bodies filling up a warm, erotic space, Dang Xuan Hoa’s crowding house utensils mingled with motifs from pagodas and communal houses, Hoang Tuong’s frankly urban, easy-going yet reticent skill And surely, that “something related to karma” will follow Tuan’s art is.” – Excerpt from Introduction by Nguyen Trung

The works are in the collection of Tran Hau Tuan.