Ung-no Lee

Lee Ungno (Korean: 이응노; January 12, 1904 – January 10, 1989) was a Korean-born French painter and printmaker whose works were chiefly focused on Eastern and Korean-style paintings. After training in traditional inkwash painting in Korea from the 1920s to the 1930s, Lee gradually experimented with Western-style painting techniques in Japan. His works from the 1950s showcase creative attempts at merging Eastern medium and brushstrokes with Western perspective and forms.

After returning to Korea before liberation and developing his early quasi-abstract ink painting style, Lee Ungno relocated to France in 1958, where he fully established his standing as an abstract artist. He is most known for his series of ink and paper collage, abstract letters, and crowd paintings that developed during his stay in France. Other than painting, Lee Ungno has worked as an art educator in Hongik University after liberation, founded Goam Misul Yeonguso (Goam Art Research Institute) and published a Korean art textbook (동양화감상기법, The Impression and the Techniques of Oriental Painting) in 1956, and also established an Eastern art school, Académie de Peinture Orientale de Paris in the 1960s.

Lee Ungno Museum opened in 2007 in Daejeon, South Korea, to preserve, display, and promote artworks and materials related to the artist. He is credited for forming part of the first generation of Korean abstract artists, and for contributing to the diversification in the use of Eastern material in modern and contemporary art.