Yun Gee was a modernist painter of some acclaim. He was born in Gee Village (now called Chu Village) near Canton, China in 1906. At the age of 15, he arrived in San Francisco and enrolled in the San Francisco Art Institute (then called the California School of Fine Arts), where he studied under Gottardo Piazzoni and Otis Oldfield. In 1926, Gee turned his attention to avant-garde painting, renouncing his classical training. He went to Paris to pursue his career. It was there that he met and married Princess Paule de Reuss. Gee befriended Gertrude Stein and became involved in bohemian circles concerned with poetry and Cubist painting.

Gee moved to New York City in the early 1930s, where he exhibited in major galleries in New York City, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Brooklyn Museum. In 1942, he married Helen Charlotte Wimmer. Although they divorced in 1947, Helen Gee kept her married name and later worked to promote Yun Gee's career after his death. In San Francisco, Paris, and New York, Gee was often the first or only Chinese artist to show in major galleries, and was the target of prejudice and discrimination in the art world all his life.

Sources: http://www.nyu-apastudies.org/2012/the-yun-gee-papers/ http://www.yungee.com/constructedsite/chron.html