Lee Boon Wang

Lee Boon Wang was born on 1 January 1934 in Guangdong, China.[2][3][4] He emigrated to Singapore with his family as a child.[3][5] He had a brother, Lee Boon Yang, who became a businessman and politician, and a sister, Lee Boon Ngan, who married the painter Chua Mia Tee.[5][3]

Boon Wang graduated from the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts in 1953.[3]

Boon Wang began his career by teaching at his alma mater, the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts.[5] He subsequently worked in advertising,[5] first for S. H. Benson and later for Leo Burnett Worldwide.[4] By the 1970s, he became a full-time landscape painter.[5] He painted many scenes by the river and the sea.[3] Many of his paintings were acquired by the National Gallery Singapore.[3] It was also exhibited at the Ngee Ann Cultural Centre and the Empress Place Museum Gallery.[4]

Boon Wang was a co-founder of the Equator Art Society, a left-leaning realist organization in the mid-1950s.[3][5] He later joined the Singapore Watercolour Society.[3]

Boon Wang had a son and two daughters from his first marriage.[3] He was then married to Helen Teo for four decades.[5]

Boon Wang underwent surgery for pancreatic cancer in 2014 and relapsed with colon cancer in 2016.[3] He died on 30 October 2016 at the St Andrew's Community Hospital in Singapore.[3]