At the Dawn of a New Age: Early Twentieth-Century American Modernism

May 7, 2022–Feb 26, 2023

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Born 1906 in Kaiping, China
Died 1963 in New York, NY

Yun Gee immigrated to San Francisco in 1921. Introduced to European modernism at the California School of Fine Arts, he embraced color as a carrier of spatial and emotional properties. Gee was an integral member of San Francisco’s avant-garde, helping to cofound the Modern Gallery and the Chinese Revolutionary Artists’ Club, where he taught young Chinese painters technique and color theory. In his paintings of San Francisco’s Chinatown, such as Street Scene, Gee combined Cubist structure with a high-key palette, rhythmically balancing his color-forms to inflect scenes of everyday life with an animated vitality. Even after leaving San Francisco in 1927, Gee remained committed to using European modernism to depict his experiences and identity as a Chinese American. Asked once why he did not paint using conventional Chinese techniques, he replied, “Because I am living in a modern industrial society.”

Large swatches of paint make up a colorful, slightly abstracted street with figures and telephone poles in the foreground.

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At the Dawn of a New Age: Early Twentieth-Century American Modernism

Yun Gee

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Street Scene, 1926

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At the Dawn of a New Age: Early Twentieth-Century American Modernism

Yun Gee

15

Street Scene, 1926

Artists

Explore works from this exhibition in the Whitney's collection

Explore works from this exhibition
in the Whitney's collection