Considered one of the earliest female artists of Vietnamese modern sculpture, Diem Phung Thi is a rare case compared to other modernists who usually went to study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de l’Indochine. She studied Dentistry at the Hanoi Medical University, and later, in France, she received her Ph.D. with a thesis on Vietnam’s “betel chewing custom”. Not until 1959, when she began to study sculpture under the Italian artist Antoniucci Volti in his studio in Paris, that she started her artistic career.

Diem Phung Thi is known for establishing her artistic language system of “seven modules”, through which she made not only sculptures but also paintings and installations. During her early period of experiment, she made sensuous sculptures combining ancient and modern techniques. Gradually, she started to redefine objects into elements that work with different shapes and spatial relations. She would put stones together into figurations, and then break them into pieces, and re-organize them into varied compositions. This repeated process of constructing and de-constructing led her to the discovery of using seven modules as basic elements for art-making. Playing with variations and scale, Diem Phung Thi has since established herself as a great modern sculptor in the history of Vietnamese art.

Born in 1920 in Chau E village, a suburban area of Hue, Diem Phung Thi came from a family of mandarins. She lost her mother when she was 3 years old and lived in the Central Highlands for nine years with her father. After graduating from college, she joined the Resistance Revolution for two years before she was sent to France for medical treatment due to her illness. Motherhood and states of mind are common themes throughout her works.