b. Kyongnam, South Korea 1936

Lee Ufan is a Korean minimalist painter, sculptor, writer and philosopher who came to prominence in the late 1960s as one of the major theoretical and practical proponents of the avant-garde Mono-ha (Object School) group. The Mono-ha school of thought was Japan’s first contemporary art movement to gain international recognition. It rejected Western notions of representation, focusing on the relationships of materials and perceptions rather than on expression or intervention. The artists of Mono-ha present works made of raw physical materials that have barely been manipulated. The relationship between painted / unpainted and occupied / empty space lies at the heart of Lee Ufan’s practice.

Lee is represented in major museum collections including: MoMA, New York; Guggenheim Museum, New York; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Tate Gallery, London; Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo Holland; the National Museums of Modern Art in Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka; the Yokohama Museum of Art and the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Seoul. His work is also held in the permanent collection of the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art and the Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park.

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