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Born in Guangdong, Yun Gee left China at age 15 to go and seek for his father in San Francisco. He had the traditional China education in his homeland, which includes classical literatures, poems and paintings. In 1925 he enrolled in California School of Fine Arts, and that was the first time he could have learned about contemporary European art theories, such as Cubism, Fauvism and Synchromism. Encouraged by his French friend in 1927, he went to Paris to develop, to visit the museums and to associate with famous people in the Paris art scene. His participation in many Salon and gallery exhibitions had matured his works, presenting creations with unique personal meanings and intentions. Maggie Pai praised Yun Gee as "One of forefront of the Modernist movement in the United States and Paris during the 1920's and 1930's."(Maggie Pai, "Orientations" Orientations, Vol.31, Feb. 2002, pp. 79-81)

Yun Gee is skilled in oil paintings, watercolor paintings, sketches, and woodcarving, most of his works blend Synchromism and Cubism. The master of Cubism is Picasso, and the Cochromaticism emphasizes color's rhythm and harmony in the picture. French poet, writer, and art critic Andre Salmon highly appraised Yun Gee's works, he thinks Yun Gee is a hard to come by patriot and a poet, he saw Picasso in Yun Gee's paintings! Salmon played an important role during the Cubism movement in the beginning of the 20th century, he wrote critics to defend Picasso and Braque when they were mocked and attacked by others. However, Yun Gee was down on his luck at that time, although he found his bosom friend in, but his development in Paris had to stop because of the world war, and went back to the United States gloomily.

The creation of the "Landscape with Houses and Donkey" happened in the late 1930's, his Paris Period, it's poetic and misty. The arrangement of the mountains and trees structure shows Cubism's existence. Critics consider the brightness and portrayal of the Paris Period are influenced by Cezanne's slope line brush stroke. The colors are vibrant and trembling, constituted an extending picture, and showed what the artist felt about the color and its structure. Essentially, Yun Gee's paintings always possess the spirits of eastern culture, the continuous mountain range, and the lone traveler in the woods has brought a brand new aesthetic perception.