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.As with his earlier painting ‘Boats, Trengganu’, Yeh has used the horizontal format to great effect in depicting the expansive scenic landscape in ‘Lake Toba’. The subject Lake Toba, together with Medan and Berastagi on Sumatra, Indonesia, was the fifth destination Yeh organised for the Ten Man Art Group in 1970. In this stylised yet representational painting, Yeh has temporarily returned to using colour after veering away from it during the 1960s. His swirling brushstrokes echo the rhythms of the undulating volcanic hillside, the shapes of nearly flat colour recalling the admired Matisse.
