Painter known for "letter abstraction" and the "Crowd (Gunsang)" series; art name Goam (顧菴)
| Life | 1904 ~ 1989 |
| Era | 근현대 |
| Clan | 전의 이씨 |
Lee Ungno (李應魯, 1904-1989) was one of the leading painters of modern and contemporary Korean art; of the Jeonui Yi clan, he used the art names Juksa and Goam. Born in Hongseong, South Chungcheong, and raised in Yesan, he went to Seoul in 1924 to study ink painting under Kim Gyu-jin. From that year he was repeatedly selected for the Joseon Art Exhibition with paintings of the Four Gentlemen such as ink bamboo, plum and orchid, and from 1938 he painted realistic landscapes in ink and light color.
In 1938 he went to Japan, studying Japanese and Western painting at the Kawabata School of Painting and the Hongo Painting Institute in Tokyo. Returning just before liberation, he founded the Dangu Art Society with Bae Ryeom, Jang Woo-soung, Kim Young-ki and Lee Yu-tae, and went on to develop a free, bold personal style of modern ink painting. Sudeok Inn in front of Sudeoksa temple in Yesan, which he bought in 1944 and where he lived and worked, was designated a South Chungcheong monument in 1996.
In 1958 he settled in Paris with his wife Park In-kyung via Germany and transformed his art with collages of discarded paper and magazines, attracting international attention; in 1964 he opened the Paris Academy of Oriental Art to teach calligraphy and ink painting to Europeans. Passing through what he called periods of expressive abstraction and calligraphic abstraction, he perfected his 'letter abstraction', and in the 1980s devoted himself to the 'Crowd' series depicting multitudes of people.
In 1967 he was implicated in the East Berlin incident, taken to Seoul and imprisoned, and returned to Paris after a special pardon in 1969. After further troubles, including being accused in 1977 of involvement in an attempted abduction of pianist Kun-Woo Paik and actress Yoon Jeong-hee, he became a French citizen in 1983 and died in Paris in 1989. The Lee Ungno Museum in Daejeon (opened 2007) and the Lee Ungno Residence in Hongseong honor his work.