In 1933, U Thaung Han was born in Thaton, Mon State. In the 1948 Art Competition for Independence Day, he took home first place. He used to perform on the piano at city movie theaters when he was little. He enrolled at the Yangon State School of Fine Arts in 1952. He then started working at the school as a teacher. He then moved to Phyu State.

Later, he started drawing for magazines and after drawing the cover for Shu Ma Wa Magazine, he started working with the name Artist Thaung Han. He left the word in 2017, May, at the age of 84.

U Win Pe is one of Myanmar’s most celebrated living artists. Along with his close friends Kin Maung Yin and Paw Oo Thett, Win Pe was a leader of Myanmar’s modern art movement in the 1960s. In 1966, Win Pe, at age 31, was appointed Dean of the Mandalay State School of Fine Art, Music, and Dance. It was his dream job, but his vision to mix modern ideas with traditional arts conflicted with the older, conservative teaching staff, and he left after four years.

He would spend the next 15 years as a film director and short story writer. His first film, Let the Sky Not Fall, was well received and in 1981 he won Myanmar’s equivalent of the Academy Awards as Best Director for his film, Red Rose Dream. In 1993, three of Win-Pe’s short stories were published in the book, Inked Over, Ripped Out. The following year, he attended the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa and earned an Honorary Fellowship there.

U Kin Maung Yin was an influential Burmese artist who was recognized as one of the leaders in the first generation of Burma’s modern art movement together with Win Pe and Paw Oo Thet. He was known not only for his paintings but also for his monk-like devotion to art alone and a proclivity for a hermetic life of solitude.

He was inspired by Dutch modernist Piet Mondrian during his school days, but later some of his works including the portrait of Aung San Suu Kyi, were inspired by Italian modernist Amedeo Modigliani. He also wrote several books. He had a stroke later in his life and decased in 2014, June.

U Thet Nyunt is a veteran painter who still can’t put his brush down even at the age of 90. With one of Burma’s famous impressionists, U Lun Gywe, being four years junior to him, U Thet Nyunt’s show could mark him the oldest working artist in the country.

In 1951, U Thet Nyunt made painting his professional calling. Though landscapes were his preferred subject, he did portraits of diplomats and their families for several foreign embassies in Yangon. U Thet Nyunt is one of a few contemporary painters still alive and kicking who are inspired by Myanmar masters like Ba Nyan and Ngwe Gaing. Contrary to many people in their advanced age, the artist is still rigorously pursuing his lifelong profession and died at the age of 94.

Star U Mya Than was born in 1934, and U Chit Pu, U Chit Tin, U Ngwe Gaing, U San Win, U Ba Kyi, U San Shein, U Hla Maung Gyi, and U Chit Maung were his primary teachers. He began painting when he was 14 years old.

The majority of his paintings concentrate on a single theme, such as a girl dancing with various body postures, color schemes, and sizes. Over time, he shifted his paintings’ focal point from a dancing princess to Kinnari Couple. His first show, held in 1977, and his second, held in 2007, which featured 32 pieces of art completely devoted to Burmese Dancing Girl. The artist then passed away recently in 2019.

U Kan Nyunt was born in Sagaing Division in 1917. During the British colonial period, he studied at the State School of Fine Arts, which was first established in 1939. In 1955, he then served as an art instructor at the State School of Fine Arts in Mandalay.

U Kan Nyunt retired from the post of headmaster in 1980 and carried on with painting for the rest of his life. If they were able to realize the true values and characteristics of the fine arts, the artist would feel confident that he had contributed something valuable to the human world indeed. U Kan Nyunt passed away at the Workers’ Hospital in Mandalay on 30 September 2005, leaving his wife Daw Khin Khin and family.