Mid career

In 1953, Tạ Tỵ was conscripted into the army of emperor Bảo Đại’s government and moved south to Saigon, where he trained to become an anti-tank artillery officer. He fought with the 13th regiment stationed in Cần Thơ before joining the psychological unit of the General Staff. In the 1960s, Tạ Tỵ’s art progressed from cubism to abstraction, a movement that he would explore for the remainder of his days. He held solo exhibitions in Saigon in 1956, 1961, 1966 and 1971. In the mid 1960s, he prepared a series of 50 portraits of southern cultural figures for an exhibition intended for 1965. It was the first series of portraits made in Vietnam that adopted a unique and special style to reflect the personality and career of each character, though the exhibition was cancelled at the last moment.

Later years

Tạ Tỵ left the army of the South Vietnamese regime in 1972 but after the war ended in 1975, as a former military officer, he was imprisoned in a reeducation camp in the north of Vietnam for six years. On his release in 1981, he and his wife escaped Vietnam by sea to Malaysia and resettled in California in 1983. Tạ Tỵ returned to Vietnam only shortly before he died in 2004.