When he was at the Taipei Normal School in 1923, he came under the tutelage of Kinichiro Ishikawa and started his formal art education. In 1963 he was appointed associate professor at the Department of Fine Arts, a post he held until his retirement in 1974.

In his early period Lee's style was mainly realist while the subject matter was usually the people and daily customs of Taiwan; in the beginning of his middle period he favored cubism and would incorporate Western geometric shapes into his paintings, later he returned to realism; he would use carefree and lively strokes which differed greatly from his early works. In his late period the geometric abstaction style had reached maturity while drawings of surrounding people were added.

Lee's works have been selected numerous times to be showcased at the Japan Art Exhibition and have been awarded the exhibition qualification of "No assessment needed". Together with Yang San-lang and Kuo Hsueh-hu he applied to the Ministry of Education to organize and judge the first Taiwan Provincial Fine Arts Exhibition. He was also awarded the Taiwan Culture Special Contribution Award and the President's Award.