Yen Shui-lung was one of the most celebrated and versatile modern artists in Taiwan. He received strict art training both in Tokyo and Paris, but over his seventy-year career, he fully devoted himself to Taiwanese native handicrafts and cultural development. In September 1997 , at the age of 95, he passed away after an operation. However, his outstanding contributions will never be forgotten.

Yen was born in Tainan, southern Taiwan, in 1903, during the Japanese occupation of Taiwan (1895-1945). His parents died when he was seven. His two older sisters were already married, and he was brought up by his grandmother and his third sister. When he was twelve, his grandmother died. In order to take care of him, his sister did not marry until he graduated from elementary school the following year, by which time he was considered totally independent.

After graduating from a two-year normal school, he worked as a teacher in a public elementary school. There a Japanese colleague discovered his talent in art and encouraged him to take the entrance exam to the Taipei Architecture College.

Although he failed the exam, he decided to head for Japan to study art. In 1920, he entered as a junior in the night school of the Tokyo Sei Soku Private High School, where he learned basic principles in painting. Two years later, he passed the highly competitive exams for the Tokyo Fine Arts School and was admitted into the Western Art Department. There he received rigorous academic art training for five years from his mentor, the renowned modern artist Takeji Fujishima.

Compared to his contemporaries, Yen had a tough life because of his poor financial situation. He received a meager allowance from his sister, and he supported himself by delivering milk and newspapers. One time he could not pay the tuition, so he decided to drop out of school. Much to his surprise, the registration office told him that his teacher had already paid for him. Feeling extremely grateful , he studied even harder.

In 1927, Yen finished his courses and returned to Taiwan. Unable to find a job, he sailed back to Tokyo and continued his education in graduate school, where he concentrated on oil painting. In July, he and his contemporaries formed the Solitary Island Society, an artists' club. In October, his painting, People, was selected for the first Taiten Exhibition in Taiwan.

In 1929, he graduated and returned to Taiwan. Despite his experience and good credentials, he was still unable to find a job in a society in which Japanese still held the highest positions in government and business.

Disappointed, he thought of retreating to the mountains to work as a ranger, just like Gauguin, the famous French artist, did in Tahiti. This idea was turned down by his good friends, who instead helped him hold a personal exhibition and raise money for a trip to France.

For the following three years, Yen studied at the Academie Art Moderne, where he learned modern art from the internationally regarded artists, Fernand Leger and Jean-Baptiste Marchand. In 1931, two of his oil paintings, Park Montsouris and La Jeune Fille, were selected for the honor of the French Salon d'Automne. Another oil painting, Nude, was also selected for the third Taiten Exhibition.

In Paris, Yen went to school during the daytime and studied French at night. Since his student visa did not permit him to get a job, he was very frugal with his savings. In one year, he became ill with malnutrition.

Fortunately, he received help from a Japanese friend who took him to his home in Cannes, in southern France, for recuperation. There he met his favorite artist, Kees van Dongen, painting at the seashore. Yen often brought his paintings to Dongen for instruction. Yen remarked that he was inspired by Dongen's techniques of using white and gray colors. This was shown in many of his oil paintings, such as A White Dress (1933), White Roses (1962), and Lilies (1990).

In 1932, he left Paris for Japan. War prevented him from traveling back to France. Yen had always adored Paris, the city of art, but it was not until 1985, when he was eighty-two, that he could finally visit Paris again and enjoy its graceful atmosphere.

Yen was hired by business companies in Japan as an advertising designer. He turned out to be very successful in this field. Based on his hard training in painting, his fresh ad designs were overwhelmingly popular in Japan. Every month he received over three thousand letters from fans.

Yen's new line of work was considered to be a comedown by his peers at that time, but he never looked down on his work . He took all forms of art equally. He introduced the concept of the corporate identification system in the advertising field. In 1972, he established Taiwan's first department of advertising at Shih Chien College, which made a place in the job market for many students with artistic talent. They loved to call him "Grandpa."

He made his living in the field of advertising for up to eleven years, creating nearly 400 design masterpieces. To celebrate his seventy-seventh birthday, a former employer, the Smoca toothpaste company, collected all his works in a book , in which it was noted, "Even fifty years later, they still look fashionable."

During intervals in his work as an ad designer, Yen traveled back and forth between Japan and Taiwan. In 1941 he married a girl of good breeding from southern Taiwan. The following year, they finally settled down in Taiwan. He was then thirty-nine years old.

Having lived abroad for many years, Yen was inspired by exotic cultures. At the dining table, for instance, he noticed that Westerners would put a plate for scraps instead of dropping them on the ground. This directly corresponded to his idea that art was part of life, both decorative and functional. In order to reach the apex of art, however, one first had to beautify his life and raise its quality.

Yen started with local handicrafts. Most people regarded them as only daily utensils, but in the artist's eyes, the craftsmanship was indeed a precious cultural heritage.

As early as 1937, he sent a proposal of his plan to the Taiwan Cultural Education Bureau and he was soon appointed to be a consultant to set up a trade school. He collected information and handicrafts from Japan and from local counties and aboriginal communities in Taiwan. Furthermore, he established a craft workshop in Tainan County, in southern Taiwan, where he taught housewives new ways to weave baskets and mats. He made beautiful art works from local grass and bamboo, which were exported oversea. The income was a fortune for many families in the agricultuaral society of that time.

With his wife taking care of the family, Yen concentrated on the native handicraft movement. He himself wove ties, clothes, shoes and baskets. His living room became a handicraft factory. Whenever he came out with a new design, the whole family pitched in with the manufacturing.

Occasionally, Yen taught sketching, art history and craftsmanship in secondary schools. He also urged the government to set up handicraft institutions to cultivate talented students. He was often invited to direct handicrafts classes in colleges, but he usually quit after a year or two because of his frustration with personnel problems in the schools , such as official corruption or bureaucratic infighting.

In 1961, Yen turned his attention to producing mosaics. Before him, mosaics had only been applied for decoration at Chinese temples. He was the first artist in Taiwan to apply ceramic appliqu* in other areas. In July, along with his students from the Taiwan National Art School, he started working on his first mosaic mural, Sports, in the Taichung City stadium. He first made a design with precise measurements, and then he enlarged it over 500 separate sheets of paper. Wherever there were flaws , he would make detailed corrections immediately. In twenty days, they finished the work, and the mosaic style soon became popular throughout Taiwan.

During the following twenty-five years, he created a total of sixteen mosaic murals in many public areas, including Buddha Healing a Disciple in the lobby of Tzu Chi General Hospital. Ever since the hospital opened in 1986, Tzu Chi employees and volunteers have met every morning in front of the mosaic to remind themselves that like the Buddha, they must have hearts full of compassion for their patients.

In 1970, far before Taipei became an international metropolis, Yen was designated consultant for the Taipei city council to coordinate the beautification of the city, which then mostly contained rice fields. Inspired by great European cities, he proposed to line Tunhua Road with trees and cast-iron seats. Many government officials considered his proposal a waste of land. Fortunately, city mayor Kao Yu-shu strongly supported the proposal, and two decades later Tunhua Road became Taipei citizens' favorite and most presentable street scene.

While he was busy with the development of local handicrafts, Yen produced much fewer paintings than his contemporaries. Nonetheless, he never stopped painting. "Professor Yen was a persistent, self-disciplined person," one of his favorite students recalled. "Ever since he was a schoolboy, no matter how busy or exhausted he was, he would draw at least one hour every day."

For years, many of his oil paintings were selected for the Tay-Yang Art Society, the oldest and largest private art association in Taiwan. During his life, Yen held only three personal exhibitions, including a retrospective of his paintings for his ninety-fifth birthday in August 1997.

Yen often carried a drawing book with him, sketching scenes with a quick , sure hand. Influenced by his Japanese mentor, Fujishima, he tended to use conceptualized style and simplified focus when enlarging his sketches onto a big canvas.

Yen's best friend, Wu Lung-rung, principal of Fulin Elementary School, observed that his paintings appeared to be rational. "Yen was open to various kinds of subjects, and his style was quite recognizable by his use of vivid colors ."

Yen often repeatedly painted the same scenic spots, particularly favoring coastal scenes on Orchid Island, near southeastern Taiwan, and the young women of the aboriginal Yami tribe there. Yen remarked that he had loved the place since he first saw it in 1935. He got along very well with the native people, so they all loved to be painted by him. In order to present their natural characteristics, he asked them to pick their favorite colors, and he studied their traditional clothes, personal items and customs. For example, members of the Yami tribe covered themselves with a red cloth knotted over the left shoulder, while members of the Lukai tribe put lily flowers on their hats.

"The aborigines are the most typical and presentable cultures in Taiwan ," Yen stressed, "and they deserve to be cherished." An art critic observed, "[Yen] is not satisfied with just painting. He makes Taiwan his canvas and paints furiously, hoping to bring back that lost, beautiful Formosa in his heart."

Compared to his enthusiasm for art, Yen was quiet, humble and practical in his personal life. He had three sons and one daughter, who now live abroad. In their education, he respected and developed their talents. Though none of them became artists, they all inherited their father's high aesthetic taste. His son, Yen Chien-feng, recalled that his mother once said, "He gave me the gift of a rich spiritual life."

After his wife died, Yen lived by himself in Wufeng County, in central Taiwan, and occasionally traveled to Europe with his children. "I was born and raised in this land," he said, "and I never want to see Taiwanese culture fade away and vanish."

Living only for art, the modest artist was twice accidentally involved in political problems because of his paintings. The first occurred when he designed a mosaic of ten sunflowers for a bakery company forty years ago. It was Yen's favorite mural, but it was banned by the government for twenty-five years because the sunflower was the national flower of the communist People's Republic of China.

In 1996, he sent his favorite painting, Impression of Orchid Island, to mainland China for an exhibition of Taiwanese art . This time the authorities in Beijing suspected that a tribal motif in the painting resembled the national emblem of the Taiwanese government. So, the painting was not allowed to be displayed.

Unlike most artists pursuing pure art, Yen converted oil painting to advertising designs, handicrafts and mosaic murals. Once he was mocked as a mere craftsman. "What I do is simply what a human being and artist should do," he replied. "As long as artists believe in what they are doing, they should do it quietly and thoroughly. You can be sure that history will never ignore them."