Win Pe
U Win Pe (b. 1935) is one of Myanmar’s most celebrated living artists. He was a leader of Myanmar’s modern art movement in the 1960s. Born on 16 June 1935 in Mandalay into a family passionate about the arts, his father, a famous scholar of Myanmar art, history and culture, introduced him to music and drawing before he even started primary school. He began his formal artistic training as an apprentice under the successful painter U Ba Thet, alongside his close friend Paw Oo Thett. Ba Thet later sent both of them to study with U Kin Maung (Bank) to learn modernist, more abstract art trends.
- Born
- 1935
- Nationality
- Myanmar
- Lives and works
- Changmai
Selected works
Artworks by Win Pe
In the early 1960s, Win Pe and Paw Oo Thett left Mandalay for Rangoon, where they met Kin Maung Yin. The three lived together, exchanged ideas, painted together and held many exhibitions. In 1966, at age 31, Win Pe was appointed Dean of the Mandalay State School of Fine Art, Music and Dance. However, his vision to mix modern ideas with traditional arts conflicted with the older, conservative teaching staff and he left after four years. He also worked as an illustrator for People’s Daily in Mandalay.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Win Pe was a successful film director, winning Myanmar’s equivalent of the Academy Award in 1981. He is also a respected short story writer. In 1964 he visited the United States, where he soon set up the Myanmar branch of Radio Free Asia – making it impossible for him to return to his native country for many years. Finally, in 2015, he was able to return to Yangon, and since devoted himself mainly to painting.
Win Pe is a highly versatile artist: a painter, cartoonist, journalist, radio broadcaster, writer, and film director. He is the very definition of the “multi-talented artist”. In his words, “modernism is a concept of thinking, conviction, and ideas”. He believes “colour can tell everything about a human being’s feelings and thoughts”.