Lim Yew Kuan (b. 1928) is one of the most prominent of Singapore’s second-generation artists, who emerged in the local art scene in the 1950s. Born in Xiamen city of China, Lim moved together with his family to Singapore in the late 1930s. His father Lim Hak Tai was the founding principle of the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts in 1938. Lim graduated from the Academy in 1950 and later joined the Equator Art Society as one of its founding members and the first president in 1956. During the period from 1958 to 1962, he pursued further study at Chelsea School of Art in London, UK. From 1964 to 1979, Lim served as the second principle of the Nanyang Academy and later continued to teach there until his retirement in 1994. In 2011, Lim Yew Kuan received the Cultural Medallion, a Singapore cultural award conferred to those who have achieved artistic excellence. Self Portrait I was created in 1966, for the first . Against an interior background, the portrait is featured with a high contrast of dark and lightness, suggesting a strong emotional implication of the subject which is the artist himself.
