Born in Fuzhou, China, Yeh Chi Wei (1915-1981) 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 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, as well as the Ten Men Art Exhibitions after such trips.The five paintings, ‘Portrait of a Dyak Lady’, ‘The Dyak Plays the Musical Instrument’, ‘Drummer’, ‘Musician’ and ‘Untitled’ (Accession No. P-0752), are examples of Yeh’s experimentation with 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. Yeh’s quiet and thoughtful approach brought to each painting, distils the subject matter down to its essence both in terms of its narrative, composition and painterly technique. His depiction of indigenous cultures offers a world rich with evocative inner meaning.
