Since the foundation of the Au Lac kingdom three centuries ago — famous for their bronze drums and their magnificent artilleries — until the works of the painters from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts of Indochina, created in Hanoi in 1925, the arts of Vietnam have been marked by its profoundly original cultures and the fusion between Asia and the Occident. The modern Vietnamese civilization has therefore inherited a very rich and multifaceted history.