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.In both of Yeh’s untitled and undated, and stylistically diverse, paintings (Accession Nos. P-0753 and P-0751), a group of figures are discernable. In the former, the highly abstracted group of what is possibly a Dayak family consisting of father, child and mother with a baby held in her arms, almost appear to merge with the background. In the latter painting, presumably the earlier of the two works, Yeh has placed the apparently indigenous figures prominently in the foreground with little emphasis on their surroundings. Although recognisably representational, Yeh has rendered the surface to appear worn by age.
