Chen was born in Guangdong, China in 1908. He graduated from the Fine Arts Department, Xinhua Arts Academy, Shanghai in 1932 before migrating to Singapore in 1948. In 1952, he was part of the seminal trip to Bali alongside his contemporaries Liu Kang, Chen Chong Swee and Cheong Soo Pieng. The exhibition of works produced as a result of that trip would later be a watershed moment for the development of the Nanyang style of painting.
The most iconic of Chen's works are his Chinese ink paintings, often depicting animals. Chen is particularly known for his paintings depicting gibbons, the most famous example being Two Gibbons Amidst Vines which adorns the fifty-dollar banknote of Singapore. He is also recognised for his finger painting, a technique learnt from his teacher Pan Tianshou. In the 1950s, Chen painted many local scenes in oils and also experimented with a series of abstract and semi-abstract paintings. Employed as a teacher at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts from 1947 to 1961, his artistic influence can be seen in works by the generation of artists succeeding him.