Background
He was born Sein Aye (စိန်အေး) to Daw Than Swe and U Tun Pe.
He was born Sein Aye (စိန်အေး) to Daw Than Swe and U Tun Pe.
Sitt Nyein Aye came from a small village, near Nyaung-U Township in Upper Myanmar. Monks in the village monastery provided the resources needed for him to attend high school. He secretly studied modern art but this was frowned on by his teachers, being dubbed "mad art".
Instead he lived on the streets and sold artworks to passers-by.
As a supporter of the pro-democracy movement in Burma, he has lived in exile in India. He changed his name to Sitt Nyein Aye, which means War and Peace, after reading the novel by Leo Tolstoy, in his twenties.
Htein Lin, the Burmese painter and performance artist, studied under Sitt Nyein Aye.