Lee Ungno
1904-1989, South KoreaLee Ungno was an artist who experimented with a unique formative language through the harmony of Korean ink painting and European Art Informel techniques, and who worked with diverse media and forms. Artist Lee, who had studied traditional literary painting and calligraphy, and had painted realistic landscapes, began to expand the scope of his media to paper collage and to experiment with amorphous abstraction influenced by Art Informel after going to France to study in the late 1950s.
It was from this period that human figures and letter abstraction began appearing in his works, but it was during the 1970s that he began to study letter abstraction, based on his training in calligraphy and painting in the literary artist’s style. In the 1980s he mainly painted large groups of people, influenced by the movement for democratisation in Gwangju, making a transition in style from abstract to figurative, while studying a formative language based on the sentiments of the Korean people. Thus, artist Lee Ungno, who expanded his work according to the flow of the spirit of the times, was able to build a unique realm of work by successfully encompassing East and West, and seeking harmony between the traditional and the modern.
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