U Lun Gywe, a celebrated impressionist master and towering figure in Myanmar’s art world, passed away on Wednesday at the age of 95. His funeral was held the same day in Yangon.
He was admired not only for his luminous canvases but also for his decades of teaching at the State School of Fine Arts, where he rose from instructor to principal and trained generations of younger artists. He also wrote extensively on art, and was widely regarded as a man who devoted his life to advancing Myanmar’s artistic tradition.
Though the artist himself was stocky in build, his paintings were alive with movement. In his horse‑and-cart scenes, for instance, the driver’s whip and the horses’ restless energy seem to leap from the canvas. His quick, fluid brushstrokes and delicate curved lines captured the vibrancy of Myanmar women—particularly htamein‑clad figures carrying water pots at the riverbank, evoking the familiar rhythms of rural evening life. The htamein is the traditional Burmese skirt.
At the heart of U Lun Gywe’s oeuvre was a fascination with the female form. He returned again and again to images of women dancing, bathing, or applying thanaka—traditional Burmese cosmetic paste—portraying them with a vision of beauty that became his artistic signature. Over the decades, he forged a style instantly recognizable as his own, marked by the vitality of female dancers in their traditional costumes.
His impressionist depictions of dancers, horse carts, women at the river, and bustling jetties were collected by admirers both at home and abroad. Today, his works are held in the National Museum of Myanmar, the Singapore Art Museum and the National Art Gallery of Malaysia.
In 2018, a portrait of since-ousted democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi by U Lun Gywe was sold for US$43,000 at a fundraising auction in Yangon.
Born in Yangon in 1930, U Lun Gywe studied under some of Myanmar’s most renowned painters including U Thein Han, U Ngwe Gaing and U Thet Win. He graduated from the Art Institute of Teacher’s Training in 1954.
A decade later, he studied in China on a cultural exchange program, followed by further study in East Germany in 1971—experiences that deepened his understanding of both Eastern and Western artistic traditions. He later reflected that these journeys enabled him to blend the techniques of both worlds into his own distinctive impressionist vision.
