이응노 탄생 120주년 '동쪽에서 부는 바람 서쪽에서 부는 바람' 학예연구사 전시투어

2024 marks the 120th anniversary of Lee Ungno's (1904-1989) birth. To commemorate this milestone, the Lee Ungno Museum and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art are jointly hosting "Lee Ungno, Wind from the East, Wind from the West." Part of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art's collaborative exhibition program with public art museums, this exhibition holds significant significance in that it showcases a significant number of works from international collections, allowing viewers to explore a new artistic world of this leading Korean artist. The central keyword of this international exhibition is "fusion." "Fusion" is a term that permeates Lee Ungno's creative work spanning over 70 years. Lee Ungno himself called it "interférence." This term, which also served as the title of an exhibition for students at the Paris School of Oriental Art, founded by Lee Ungno, envisioned participants "discovering their own creative language" and ultimately "the qualitative enrichment of Eastern and Western art together." This can be summarized as meaning that all creative languages ​​engage in dialogue on an equal footing, enhancing each other. As this term succinctly illustrates, it is no exaggeration to say that Lee Ungno's artistic world was formed through the clash of opposing socio-cultural elements—East and West, colonialism and imperialism—and the resulting constant reinterpretation. Within his art, diverse elements of Korean art history, such as literati painting, folk painting, sentimental painting, and decorative painting, intersected in his work. This international exhibition showcases the world of convergence that Lee Ungno created, freely crossing various boundaries. In 2014, the Lee Ungno Museum held the exhibition "Etrangés, Lee Ungno in West Germany," which explored Lee Ungno's activities in Germany. Germany was the starting point of his European activities. The Lee Ungno Museum's project, which traces Lee Ungno's trajectory in Europe, began with this exhibition and expanded to include France and Switzerland. These exhibitions primarily focused on Lee Ungno's achievements after his move to Europe in the 1960s, highlighting his achievements after he entered the mainstream of the Western art world. These exhibitions vividly recreated the enthusiasm his works, utilizing Eastern materials like paper, brush, and ink, evoked in the European art world. They also provided an opportunity to convey Lee Ungno's boundless passion for exploration, encompassing abstract letterforms using Korean and Chinese characters, sculpture, ceramics, and tapestries. The Lee Ungno Museum's recent exhibitions, spatially from Europe to Korea and temporally from 1958, before his move to Europe, reveal a different side of Lee Ungno. These exhibitions include the "Anmok Cheonggwanjae Lee Ungno Collection Exhibition" (2022) and the "70 Years' Reunion Exhibition" (2023). Lee Ungno has been recognized as an exceptionally creative artist, unconstrained by the forms and materials of traditional Oriental painting. Yet, the enduring traditions of East Asia and Korea, where he lived, constantly emerge within his work. While the history of East Asian calligraphy formed the foundation of Lee Ungno's work, his business in signage and interior decoration, which began in the late 1920s, also infused his work with a design sensibility rarely found in contemporary Korean artists. From Chinese oracle bone script to Arabic script, from group dances on stage to traditional landscapes, from the Four Gracious Plants to wallpaper designs, it is difficult to discern the roots of traditions and influences in his diverse oeuvre. This international exhibition, held at the Lee Ungno Museum, showcases traditional works created by Lee Ungno before his migration to Europe and in Paris alongside experimental Western modernist works, demonstrating the exchanges between diverse elements of East Asia and Europe, tradition and modernity. Through this exhibition, we hope to convey the sense that Lee Ungno's work was a celebration of the collision, transformation, and fusion of formative languages ​​and models inspired by countless cultures.