Win Pe

Win Pe (b. 1935) is Myanmar’s most revered living artist and a central pillar of the nation’s modern cultural history. A true Renaissance Man. He learned to paint from Ba Thet and later learned from modernist Kin Maung (Bank). Moving to Rangoon, he was a leader of the second generation of modernists in the 1960s alongside his friends Kin Maung Yin and Paw Oo Thett. This would have been enough to secure his place, but his influence extends far beyond painting: he served as Dean of the Mandalay State School of Fine Art, gained renown as a syndicated cartoonist, a novelist and short story writer. In 1973 Win Pe became a film director and made movies for 15 years, winning Myanmar’s equivalent of the Academy Award for Best Director in 1981. When Paw Thame left Lokanut Gallery and founded Peacock Gallery—Myanmar’s first modern art gallery—Win Pe was the first to join him. After the 1988 uprising disrupted film production, he turned back toward painting and literature, eventually emigrating to the United States in 1994.

In the United States, Win Pe entered a more exploratory and inward phase. He studied writing in Iowa and film in Hollywood before settling in New York. Later, for many years, he lived and worked in Washington as an editor and writer for Radio Free Asia. Yet, it was his highly popular Sunday afternoon radio program, Win Pe's Mailbag, that further cemented his connection with the public. Broadcast into Myanmar via RFA, the show resonated much like A Prairie Home Companion, keeping him ever-present and endearing him to a devoted audience of admirers.  Painting continued, but intermittently, resulting in a relatively small body of work from this period. This changed when he retired from RFA and serendipitously connected with patron and dealer Chris Dodge, who actively supported him and acquired most of his output between 2008 and 2010, much of which is now held in the BMA Archive. Throughout his career, watercolor remained central to his practice, and during these U.S. years he reached a technical and expressive peak in the medium. Returning to Myanmar in 2013, he entered a prolific new phase marked by large-scale acrylic works, but the watercolors and paintings from Win Pe’s 2008-2010 period held by the BMA Archive are now highly sought after by leading galleries and collectors.

Art historian Hlaing Bwa’s new monograph, Win Pe: Painting with Sound, Singing in Color, will be released in June 2026.