Lee Ufan

After he moved to Japan in 1956, Lee travelled extensively between the two countries and served as a vital conduit between what was happening in both places and helped to introduce Dansaekhwa to a wider audience abroad. Lee’s art process and materials consist of unconventional ideas and anti-authoritarian concepts. His series From Line and From Point, begun in the early 1970s, connected him to many of the ideas in Dansaekhwa. Lee explored themes of gesture and the connection between mark making and the medium of paint itself. This interest was grounded in the tradition of calligraphy, which involved a discipline of repeatedly drawing single lines, and frames the artist’s profound investigation of the act of painting.

Lee’s work has been featured in hundreds of solo and group exhibitions since 1967 including Pompidou Metz, Metz, France (2019); Serpentine Galleries, London, UK (2018); Couvent de la Tourette, Eveux, France (2017); Centre de Création Contemporaine Olivier Debré, Tours, France (2017); Château La Coste, Le Puy-Sainte-Réparade, France (2016); Palace of Versailles, Versailles, France (2014); Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY, USA (2011); the Yokohama Museum of Art, Yokohama, Japan (2005); the Samsung Museum of Modern Art, Seoul, South Korea (2003); Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany (2001); the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris, France (1997); and the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, South Korea (1994). He was awarded the Praemium Imperiale for painting in 2001 and the UNESCO Prize in 2000. In 2010 the Lee Ufan Museum, designed by Tadao Ando, opened at Benesse Art Site, Naoshima, Japan.

Courtesy The Columns Gallery