Yeh Chi Wei (1913-1981) was born in Fuzhou, China and is included among a group referred to as Singapore's 'first generation artists'. Graduating from Shanghai's Xinhua Academy of Fine Arts in 1936, Yeh worked as an art teacher throughout Malaya and Singapore until 1964, while being an active member of various art groups. He was especially noted in having started a series of painting trips since 1960 to various Southeast Asian and Asian countries under the Ten Men Group, organising the Ten Men Art Exhibitions after such trips. 'The Dayak Plays the Musical Instrument' is an example of Yeh's experimentation in incorporating diverse Western and Eastern influences and interests into the treatment of his figurative subjects. His elongated figures are rendered in black, framed by textured fields of muted colour. Building on his interests in archaic calligraphic scripts and motif, Yeh advocates a sense of antiquity in his works. Inscribed in archaic scripts, Yeh took lines from Tang dynasty's Liu Changqing, which laments that few could appreciate ancient melodies and therefore seldom played. His depiction of indigenous cultures offers a world rich with evocative inner meaning.
