Expositions passées
“Lee Ungno Masterpieces” is an exhibition that will showcase the quintessence of Lee Ungno’s art, featuring approximately 1,400 items of the museum’s collection displayed by era/decade and genre. Lee is one of the most prominent figures of contemporary Korean art who, by applying abstract techniques to a foundation of East Asian painting and calligraphy, invented a unique formative language. He spent his life exploring the Korean aesthetic, and achieved the rare feat of converting that aesthetic into a format that can be understood and appreciated universally: in other words, the seemingly-impossible task of “globalizing” Korean art that the Korean art community faced in the 20th century. This exhibition aims to spotlight this pioneering spirit through Lee’s constantly-evolving artworks and the message that his works embody.
The exhibition will spotlight Lee’s art from three perspectives. First, it will display works that represent watershed/genre-changing moments in Lee’s career to show how his artistic world and methods of exploration evolved over time. Second, it will display quintessential works that facilitate an in-depth understanding of the type of art that Lee strived to create over the course of his career. Third, it will display works that depict the foundational themes of Lee’s artistic world as well as its contextual underpinnings. The exhibition will be held concurrently with the general meeting of United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG), which is to be held this year in Daejeon, to convey Lee’s art to foreigners who are learning about Lee Ungno for the first time in an easy-to-understand yet effective manner.
Furthermore, the exhibition will showcase lesser-noted items from the museum’s collection that will offer a new perspective of Lee’s art—even to those who are familiar with Lee Ungno—based on collaboration with the Leeungno Research Institute, which has spearheaded research on the Lee Ungno Museum’s collection since 2020, and its senior curators. The sections on sculptures and abstract painting will, by displaying many of the artworks included in the Lee Ungno Collections Anthology series, serve as a tangible connection to the Leeungno Research Institute ‘s research.
The fundamental value of Lee’s art lies in his explorations of Eastern and Western painting (in Japan and Korea) in the post-World War II years and his merging of Western abstract art with Korean cultural characteristics in Paris, which was the center of Western art at the time. The latter is especially well-depicted in the People series, which is widely regarded as the apex of Lee’s art. The series is characterized by its balance of bamboo painting-inspired brushwork that radiates a distinctly Korean mood, the practice in abstract art of covering the entire canvas with repetitive brushstrokes, and human figures that are all similar while also each being unique. This exhibition aims to remind viewers of the ideals of peace and harmony of the East and West that Lee advocated throughout his career and serve as an indicator of the direction that should be taken in the coming years by Korean culture, which is rapidly gaining in visibility worldwide.
