Who is Yeh Chi Wei

Yeh with sons Toh Woi and Toh Yen outside their Chung Cheng school hostel, together with Yeo Hwee Bin and his daughter sometime in the late 1950s. Photograph kindly provided by Yeh Toh Yen.

Born in 1913 in Fuzhou, China, Yeh studied art in Shanghai and later settled in Singapore. Here, he became a well-respected art educator, as well as an extremely influential artist within the region. He was best known for his leadership in the Ten Men Art Group, a group of artists who got together in the 1960s to seek new material and inspiration for their works. Yeh would organise a number of painting trips to various countries in Asia, and the group would exhibit their works together after these trips.

Yeh doing calligraphy in his studio. Photography kindly provided by Yeh Toh Yen

Like the other Nanyang artists, Yeh received formal instruction in painting in China before he came over to Singapore in 1937. Like them, Yeh’s aesthetics were radically shaped by his new life in Malaya as well as his travels to other parts of Southeast Asia. Yeh collected textiles and weavings from Borneo, ikat and Javanese batik, tribal sculptures and ceramics. He was deeply interested in Chinese woodblock prints, Han dynasty carvings, decorations on bronze vessels, oracle bone and stone drum inscriptions. Through his embrace of such diverse cultural materials and his experimentation with abstraction, Yeh went on to create highly distinctive oil paintings, works that bear witness to his engagement with Asian and Western art histories.

Yeh taught art for 22 years at different schools around Singapore and Malaya and passed away in 1981. This exhibition is the first survey show since his passing, and is an overview of his artistic career and showcases his contributions to the Singapore art scene.