Vo Xuong was born on 8 December 1942 in Hai Duong province in northern Vietnam. During his youth in the 1960s, he worked for a newspaper in the Northern port and industrial city of Hai Phong as a printing technician. He never studied art but had a talent for it.

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Vo Xuong was originally a war artist who was following the armies and documenting the battles. Most of all he documented the life behind the army lines through his sketches. He is one of a few well known artists commissioned by the Vietnamese government to produce paintings to commemorate special occasions and events such as National Day, the anniversary of Dien Bien Phu and Liberty Day.

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His propaganda paintings are the artist’s originals which were then published in giant size (about 5m by 10m) to be hung in the streets. The artist’s goal was to reproduce the intensity and emotion of the historic event in the heart of a younger generation that had not experienced the events first hand.