Born in 1928 in Malaysia, painter and sculptor Wee Kong Chai settled in Singapore in 1952. A graduate of the Singapore Academy of Arts (1957-60), Wee left for Paris in 1964 to study at the École Nationale Supérieure Des Beaux-Arts, returning to Singapore only five years later. Having arrived in Paris the previous year, Wee demonstrates with ‘A Scene in Paris’ from 1965 the changes his painting style has already undergone since his recent arrival. This work reflects the artist’s new preoccupation with recording light and form, heavily modulated and verging towards abstraction, all executed with a looser grip on the brush unlike his laboured earlier works. It is easy to imagine Wee seated at his portable easel, painting in the “en plein air” tradition to perhaps escape the confines of a cramped classroom or his tiring dishwasher job, yet revelling in his newfound Parisian artist life.
