Roger Ychai was born in 1941 at the city of Oran, Algeria.
He is a painter, a musician, a poet and a teacher.

He began his artistic career from a young age as a classic guitar player, and started painting after moving to Paris, France, in 1957. While in France, he studied at the famous ‘Schola Cantorum’ school where his teachers where Ida Presti and Alexander Lagoya. Later on he became a teacher at the ‘Schola Cantorum’ school. He also studied ethnomusicology at the school ‘Ecole Pratiques des Haute Etudes’ in Paris, France.

In 1967 he was granted a scholarship to continue his musical studies at the ‘Bela Bartok’ Academy in Budapest, where he researched Hungarian folklore. Later, he traveled to Iran to familiarize himself with oriental music, specializing in Zarb/Tombak (percussive musical instrument).

Roger gave many recitals, concerts, solos as well as concerts with the ‘Roger Ychai Ensemble’, with whom he performed and for which he wrote music and musical arrangements. In 1981, Roger immigrated to Israel, settling in the city of Jerusalem, where he became a member of the ‘Jerusalem Ensemble’ for contemporary music and a teacher at the Jerusalem Music Center. He underwent heart surgery, after which he could no longer continue playing music and performing, that is when he began to dedicate himself mostly to painting and became a member of the Israeli Painters Association. Since then, Roger was invited to exhibit his plastic art, both personal and group exhibitions, throughout Israel and France.

In the year 2000 he founded the ‘Haoman Hai’ studio where he established a platform for workshops and concerts as well as a permanent display of his many works of art.

Ychai describes his paintings as a research between the figurative and the abstract, while at times embedding his poems as an integral part of the image portrayed.