Bamboo

Lee Ungno had great interest in bamboo from early on in his artistic career, leading him to produce works depicting the plant displaying different features and located in different environments, including Cheongjuk (bamboo with blue stem), Jujuk (bamboo with scarlet stem), Mukjuk (bamboo in ink wash), Pungjuk (bamboo in wind), Ujuk (bamboo in rain), and Seoljuk (bamboo in snow). The courtesy name he used before “Goam” was “Juksa” (meaning “bamboo scholar”), which was given to him when he was an art student under Kim Gyu-jin (who was also known as “Haegang,” 1868-1933), which was followed by “Cheongjuk” (meaning “clear day bamboo”) in 1927 when he received the Critic’s Choice Prize (Ipseon) at the Joseon Art Fair. This award led Lee to start his career as a professional artist. Lee Ungno was fond of bamboo throughout his entire life, as shown by the works of calligraphic abstraction he created in his later years. This particular bamboo work, completed in 1971, shows not a single bamboo tree but many trees growing in a bamboo grove, standing in a rather uneasy manner, as if they had just weathered a storm. Despite the ordeal they had suffered through, the bamboo trees are standing upright with their leaves thick and full of energy, though slightly disheveled. The bamboo leaves, depicted to suggest that the trees had been attacked by a raging storm, seem to foretell the kinetic energy that the artist would express in a later series of works showing crowds of people.