About a year ago, I reported on the cleaning of a cubist masterpiece by Tạ Tỵ. The painting The Guitar was covered in a large amount of overpaint, which took a long time to remove. It was only after overpaint and dirt removal that the full extent of damage and paint loss was visible. It […]

The Guitar is a cubist oil painting on canvas. It was painted by Tạ Tỵ in 1957, and was purchased by Witness Collection at auction in France in 2009. Prior to entering the collection, the painting had undergone extensive restoration. Tạ Tỵ (1922-2004) is known as Vietnam’s leading proponent of cubism and abstraction. Large areas of […]

Phố Hàng Cá (‘Fish Street’) was painted in 1962 by Bùi Xuân Phái (1920-88), a Hanoi artist who became one of Vietnam’s best-known painters for his depictions of the old streets of the city. On this painting from Witness Collection, oil paint was applied on the textured side of a hardboard panel. This cross-hatched texture, […]