Graduated from the École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de l’Indochine (1939-1944), during the first days of the 1945 August Revolution, he became a member of the National Salvation Cultural Association.

He was notable among painters for subversive political stances. After 1944, he was a faculty member at the renamed EBAI, Hanoi University of Fine Arts. Still, for his participation in the journal Nhân Văn, he spent 1957–1959 in a re-education camp. After his release, until his retirement in 1983, he was an executive on the Arts Committee.