Lee Ufan

Early life and Education

Lee Ufan was born in 1936 in Haman County, South Gyeongsang Province, in what is now South Korea, and came of age amid Japanese colonial rule and the Korean War. He studied painting at the College of Fine Arts at Seoul National University, while also training in calligraphy and poetry, before relocating to Japan in 1956. In Tokyo, he later studied philosophy at Nihon University, immersing himself in both Eastern and Western thought. His early exposure to political upheaval and displacement, combined with philosophical study, underpins his sustained preoccupation with distance, encounter, and the ethics of perception. Today, Lee lives and works between Kamakura, Japan, and Paris, France, and maintains an international practice that spans several continents

Artistic Practice and Philosophy

Lee’s practice encompasses painting, sculpture, installation, and extensive critical writing, and is grounded in an “ethics of restraint” that favours sparse interventions over expressive excess. He frequently juxtaposes raw stones with industrial materials such as steel plates, glass, and rubber, placing them in carefully calibrated relationships that draw attention to weight, balance, and the contingencies of a given site. Philosophically, his work is shaped by East Asian thought (including Zen and Confucian traditions) and European phenomenology, focusing on encounter, interval, and what he calls “the world as it is.” Rather than treating artworks as autonomous objects, Lee understands them as open situations in which materials, space, and viewers co‑exist on equal terms. This orientation has made him a key reference point in discussions of global minimalism and postwar abstraction.

Painting Process and Key series

In painting, Lee is best known for the long‑running series From Point and From Line, begun in the early 1970s. Using a brush heavily loaded with a single colour, he applies repeated points or vertical strokes on a white ground, allowing the pigment to gradually fade until the brush runs dry, then resumes the action in measured rows. This repetitive, disciplined process turns each canvas into a record of duration, bodily rhythm, and the gradual exhaustion of gesture rather than a field of expressive marks. Critics have linked these works both to post‑minimal seriality and to Korean Dansaekhwa, where repetitive brushwork and monochrome surfaces embody the passage of time and meditative labour.

In sculpture and installation, his ongoing Relatum series (a title borrowed from philosophical terminology for “that which is in relation”) consists of dispersed arrangements of stones and manufactured elements, often left to lean, rest, or balance according to their own weight. Works from Relatum disrupt systems of measurement or architectural order, prompting viewers to register subtle shifts in gravity, scale, and bodily orientation. Later series such as Dialogue extend these concerns to painting‑based installations, with a few large, viscous brushstrokes placed directly on the walls of an otherwise empty room, activating the surrounding void.

Mono‑ha, Dansaekhwa and writing

From the late 1960s, Lee emerged as the principal theorist and one of the key artists of Mono‑ha, a Japanese movement that foregrounded “things” in their given state rather than images or narratives constructed by the artist. In essays such as “From Object to Being” (1969) and other critical texts, he formulated a philosophy of encounter in which materials, site, and viewer form a relational field that resists domination by the artist’s will. Mono‑ha’s use of unaltered materials and its scepticism toward modern progress have been read as responses to the collapse of colonial orders and to widespread student and anti‑authoritarian protests in Japan at the time.

In parallel, as his work gained prominence in Seoul in the 1970s, Lee became closely associated with the Korean Dansaekhwa (monochrome) movement, where his iterative, time‑based paintings resonated with artists exploring restraint, repetition, and material presence. Over his career he has published more than a dozen books of philosophy, criticism, and poetry, reinforcing his status as an artist‑philosopher whose writings are frequently cited in museum catalogues and critical essays.

Seminal moments and Major milestones

Several key moments have defined Lee Ufan’s international trajectory.

• In the late 1960s and early 1970s he gained visibility through exhibitions in leading Tokyo galleries and museums, as well as participation in the 1971 Paris Youth Biennale, which helped introduce Mono‑ha to European audiences and led him to establish a studio in Paris.
• Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, his From Point and From Line series consolidated his reputation across Japan and Korea, positioning him as a central figure in postwar Asian abstraction.
• In 2010, the Lee Ufan Museum, designed by Tadao Ando, opened on Naoshima in Japan’s Seto Inland Sea, dedicated to a dialogue between the artist’s work, architecture, and landscape.
• The following year, the Guggenheim’s retrospective Lee Ufan: Marking Infinity (2011) marked his first major U.S. survey, filling the museum’s rotunda and annex galleries with nearly five decades of work; it drew significant critical attention in outlets including Artforum and The New York Times.

More recently, the opening of Lee Ufan Arles, a private museum in the historic centre of Arles, France, has created a permanent European base for his work, underscoring his status as a transnational artist whose practice spans Asia and the West.

Alongside these institutional milestones, Lee’s participation in the Venice Biennale (including representing Korea in the 1990s and subsequent projects), his presence in major collections, and his ongoing collaborations with galleries such as Pace, Lisson, and others have further cemented his influence on contemporary art discourse.

Awards and Accolades

• Officier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, France (2013)
• Praemium Imperiale for Painting, Japan (2001)
• UNESCO Prize for the Promotion of the Arts (2000)

Exhibitions

Lee Ufan has been the subject of major solo exhibitions and included in important group exhibitions at museums around the world.

Solo Exhibitions

• Lee Ufan, Dia Beacon, Beacon, New York ( 2026)
• Lee Ufan, SMAC San Marco Art Centre, Venice, a major presentation of work organised in collaboration with Dia Art Foundation and scheduled during the 2026 Venice Biennale period (Collateral Event)
• Lee Ufan: Quiet Resonance, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (2024)
• Lee Ufan, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2023)
• Lee Ufan: 15th Anniversary of the National Art Center, National Art Center, Tokyo (2022)
• Lee Ufan, Dia: Beacon, New York (2019)
• Relatum-Stage, Serpentine Galleries, London (2018)
• Marking Infinity, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2011)
• The Art of Margins, Yokohama Museum of Art, Yokohama, Japan (2005)

Group Exhibitions

• Minimal, Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection, Paris (2024–2025);
• Keep Changing, Connect with Everything, Continue Forever, Daegu Art Museum, Daegu, South Korea (2025)
• Icônes, Punta della Dogana, Venice (2024)
• STARS: Six Contemporary Artists from Japan to the World, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, (2020)
• Formes Simples, Centre Pompidou-Metz, Metz, France (2014)
• Tokyo 1955–1970: A New Avant-Garde, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2012)
• In Praise of Doubt, Punta della Dogana – Francois Pinault Foundation, Venice (2011)
• Void in Korean Art, Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul (2007)

Website

Lee Ufan’s website can be found here.

Critical Reception

Lee Ufan’s practice has been covered in leading magazines, including Apollo, Artnet, and Frieze. In 2015, Katie Fallen spoke with the artist for an Ocula Conversation.

Lee Ufan FAQs

Ocula | 2026