Bùi Xuân Phái is the best known of all Vietnamese modern painters. He is famous for his paintings of the Hanoi Old Quarter. Bui Xuan Phai is respected and admired for both his art and moral character. He epitomizes for the Vietnamese the lone artist suffering for his art: he lost his teaching position at the Hanoi College of Fine Arts in 1957 for supporting "Nhân Văn" affair a movement for political and cultural freedom and was not allowed to show his work in public until a solo exhibition in 1984. However, he was awarded posthumously Ho Chi Minh prize in 1996, the highest national prize in Vietnam.