Nguyen Tu Nghiem is considered one of the Four Pillars of modern Vietnamese art. Unlike the four masters who received recognition from the state, the four pillars earned the reputation within the Vietnamese art community for their artistic individuality.

Nguyen Tu Nghiem spent most of his artistic career painting folk motifs. Over the years, he has made numerous sketches of the carvings that adorn the Dinh or communal houses in villages surrounding Hanoi, and he would make paintings in oil or lacquer based on the sketches. Throughout the years, his paintings gradually transitioned into abstraction as he was not so interested in the content but rather the form.

Nguyen Tu Nghiem’s use of folk motifs in paintings was widely considered a breakthrough and much admired by his peers when he first showed his work to the public in the early 1980s. Between 1945-1986, the state promoted a nationalism that considered village culture as backward and superstitious. Villagers were discouraged from worshipping heroes and spirits unless they were part of national history. The nationalism promoted by the state would prefer paintings portraying contemporary farmers’ life and work rather than the ancient village culture.

Entering into l’Ecole des Beaux-Arts de l’Indochine in 1941, Nguyen Tu Ngheim first studied under Joseph Inguimberty and Nam Son and, in his third year, was taught by To Ngoc Van. The other one of the Four Pillars, Bui Xuan Phai, was his classmate then. In 1943 following the bombing raid from the Americans, Nghiem and his classmates evacuated to Son Tay with the rest of the painting group to continue their studies.

Nguyen Tu Nghiem was also greatly influenced by Nguyen Do Cung. During wartime, they visited temples and pagodas to study folk culture together. Since then, he would often take inspiration from his studies of Vietnamese culture, including traditional architecture, funerary sculpture, woodblock prints, folk music and dance, potteries, etc. His most renowned series of paintings include ancient dance, Giong, and horoscope. After 25 years of researching the folk motifs, Nguyen Tu Nghiem gradually switched to using solid lines and patterns inherited from the ancient culture and experimented with abstraction.