YEH Shih-Chiang

Yeh Shih-Chiang was born in 1926 in Guangdong Province, China, and died in Taipei in 2012. He was among the last class of students at the Guangzhou Municipal Junior Art College under the directorship of the illustrious ink painter Gao Jianfu. He settled in Taiwan in 1949 after first visiting the island as an art student from Guangzhou. This was a time when many Taiwanese artists were coming into contact with Western Post-War modernism, which inspired them to embark on an intensive period of experimentation, seeking a new language of Chinese ‘modernism’ with ink painting as its basis. Ultimately he found his solution in a return to the pure and eternal realm of art, taking elements he found compelling from both modern and traditional languages as he developed his own painting practice.