The Life and Work of Lee Ungno

He practiced literary painting under the instruction of Kim Gyu-jin, a master of traditional bamboo painting. “Literary painting” is an inclusive term that refers to all paintings that depict the spirit of the traditional Korean scholar-literati (who did not create paintings as a means of earning a living) and their advanced level of learning. In terms of technique, literary paintings begin with a simple sketch in India ink, followed by a very light-handed application of colored paint. These paintings typically depict the inner world of the artist, instead of focusing on the detailed representation of actual objects.

In 1924, Lee’s bamboo painting, Cheong-juk, was selected for the 3rd Chosun Art Exposition. This event marked Lee’s official debut in the art world. In the years that followed, Lee began to focus on developing his own painting style. In 1931, another of Lee’s bamboo paintings of the same name (Cheong-juk) won the grand prize at the 10th Chosun Art Exposition, further establishing Lee’s name in the art world. Bamboo remained one of Lee Ungno's most familiar subject matters throughout his entire career—from his first steps as a painter to his development of his own style and his explorations of Western abstract art in Paris. Bamboo was like one of Lee Ungno’s lifelong friends and became a symbol of his art.

In 1935, Lee 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.

In Tokyo, Lee was exposed to the realistic expression of Western painting for the first time, and he started to paint landscapes in a similar manner, gradually breaking away from the ideals of literati painting.

As part of his new painting style, Lee employed Western shading and perspective, while still using traditional ink and brushes. His landscape paintings, particularly those made after Korea regained its independence from Japan, showed a distinctive style that emphasized the essence of the object by boldly leaving out details. He eventually developed this style into a semi-abstract, and then abstract style, until he moved to France in 1958. In 1945, Lee established the Dan-gu Art Academy together with artists Jang-woo, Bae-ryum, and Kim Young-ki, who had returned to Seoul from Japan in pursuit of traditional Korean painting, breaking away from Japanese influences. Lee also opened the Goam Art Studio in Namsan, Seoul, and began to teach young students there. Between 1948 and 1950, he was a professor of the fine arts department at Hong-ik University.

In 1958, Jacques Lassaigne, who served as the head of the French branch of the International Association of Art Critics at that time, invited Lee (who was 54 years old) to Paris.

His flight to Paris to participate in an exhibition in the heart of the Western art world made the headlines of most daily newspapers in Korea.

Many artists wrote about the exhibition, Goam, Lee Ungno: Flight to France, at the public information office in Seoul for the newspapers day after day.

At the recommendation of Dr. Hertz, who was the West German ambassador to Korea at the time, Lee headed to Germany only a week after he arrived in Paris.

Many local papers reported his exhibition in the main section as the first Korean modern art exhibition in West Germany.

Over the next year, he traveled to three German cities - Frankfurt, Cologne, and Bonn - and held four exhibitions before once again returning to Paris.

In Paris with Shin Moon in the 1960s

In contrast to European collages, which were typically made by pasting geometric paper shapes on canvas, Ungno tore pages from magazines, divided them by color, and glued them together to create layers.

In 1967, while establishing his reputation as an international artist, Lee was incarcerated for his involvement in the so-called “East Berlin Affair.” However, even during his imprisonment, Lee remained active and created over 300 pieces of artwork while behind bars.

The scarcity of painting materials in jail forced him to explore new medium; he drew on toilet paper with soy sauce and made models using paper and rice paste.

This painting shows one example of the Abstract Letter paintings that he made in prison using ink on hanji and then painting over the canvas with soy sauce as if testifying to his imprisonment. Unlike ink, soy sauce is not a proper pigment and thus, its colour is brownish rather than black when it is put on paper; as it is not rich enough to make a long spread, the canvas shows several marks where he had to resume the application of the soy sauce at each moment.

He opened new doors for Eastern abstract painting by incorporating the Chinese characters and calligraphy he had learned and practiced since childhood into his paintings.

The sounds and meanings of Chinese characters which are, in essence, pictographs and abstractions of natural forms, are expressed in the form of strokes and dots.

In the early phase of his Abstract Letter series, Lee reinterpreted modern abstract painting with a calligraphic style, combining hieroglyphic-like characters written on a planar surface with the unintentional effect of smudged ink on hanji (traditional Korean paper). In his later work, he increasingly disassembled, transformed, and reassembled the geometrical forms of the letters.

Lee focused on the abstract patterns of hangeul (the Korean alphabet) and hanja (Chinese characters), combining patterns to create numerous variations.

In 1964, Lee founded the Académie de Peinture Orientale de Paris at the Musée Cernuschi in Paris, and taught local people traditional Korean painting and calligraphy.

V. Elisseeff, the director of Musée Cernuschi, helped Lee establish the Académie, with the support of many artists including H. Hartung, P. Soulages, Fujita, and Zao Wou-Ki.

As the only institute of East-Asian art in Europe, the Académie was a bridgehead for Korean art into Europe, where there was little understanding of Korean culture.

With painter Ji-ho Oh

In 1976, Lee opened the Goryeo Gallery as a regular venue to present the works of students of the Académie de Peinture Orientale de Paris. After Lee’s death, his widow, Park In-kyung, and their son, painter Lee Young-sé, continued to spread his teachings. To date, about 3,000 students have graduated from the Académie. In 2014, Lee’s widow and son founded the Goam Academy in Vaux-sur-Seine, on the outskirts of Paris, in a building designed by Swiss architect Jean-Michel Wilmotte.

His later works in the 'People' series feature countless human figures rendered using brushstrokes; the figures seem as if they were created by Lee writing letters on a piece of paper, covering the entire page.

The most salient feature of Lee’s People series is the repetition of a single brushstroke, which represents a man.

The power of Lee’s otherworldly brushstrokes gives breath to his human figures.

In this sense, Lee’s People series can be regarded as the pinnacle of his artwork, in which his perspective on art and life are greatly reflected.

Teaching students at the Academy of Oriental Painting, 1988. Almost all the pictures in Academy were taken by his son.(Artist Lee Young-sé)

Lee’s works are internationally collected by a great number of galleries in France, Italy, the U.K, Switzerland, Denmark, Thailand, Japan, and the U.S.A, including MoMA in New York and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs de Paris.