Lee Ungno

Lee Ungno at his studio in Pré Saint-Gervais in the 1980s. Lee Ungno was born in 1904 in South Korea. His works were mainly focused on reinterpreting modern abstract painting with a calligraphic style. Moving to Paris in 1958, he developed a new form of abstract art using Oriental letters in a new series called 'Abstract letter'. In 1964, Lee founded the 'Académie de peinture orientale de Paris' within the Musée Cernuschi in Paris, and taught local people traditional Korean painting and calligraphy. His works are internationally collected by a great number of museums and galleries in France, Italy, Switzerland, Japan and U.S.A. including MoMA in New York, the Musée des beaux-arts de La Chaux-de-Fonds in Switzerland, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs de Paris, the Musée Cernuschi and CNAP in Paris.