Lee Ungno in the 1930s

In 1935, Goam went to Tokyo to study. Having first learned traditional painting at the Kawabata Art School and Western painting at Hon-go Painting Institute, he was accepted as a pupil of Matsubayasi Keigetsu, master of the Japanese Southern School of Painting. At that time, he first witnessed the realistic expression of Western painting and started to paint landscapes in such a manner, gradually breaking away from the ideals of literati painting: Ungno employed Western shading and perspective in his painting, while still using traditional ink and brush. His landscape paintings, particularly those made after Korea’s independence from Japan, showed a distinctive style that emphasized the essence of the object by drastically leaving out details. Such a tendency was eventually developed into a semi-abstract, then abstract style, until he moved to France in 1958.