Lee Joon (b. 1919) is a pioneer of Korea modern art who studied at the Taiheiyo Art School and held 12 solo shows and numerous group exhibitions. He was the recipient of the Presidential Prize at the 2nd National Art Exhibition of the Republic of Korea in 1953 as well as the Silver Crown Order of Cultural Merit in 1995, and served on the faculty of the College of Art and Design of Ewha Womans University. Lee was selected as a member of the National Academy of Arts of the Republic of Korea in 1981.
Lee Joon is a veteran Korean artist who, amongst Korean modern and contemporary abstract painters, established his own style of lyrical geometric abstract art. His works often consist of geometric lines and spaces with lyrical colors dominating the entire canvas―nonrepresentational work expressing a sense of nature by means of form and color based on Lee’s self-professed agenda “to determine the unknown elements inherent in the nature.” In the 1950s, Lee’s representational paintings were influenced by the Western art that he studied while in Japan. Then in the 1960s, he entered a geometric color abstraction phase that reduced an object into a geometric constitution reflecting Cubism and Informel. Later in the 1970s, Lee continued to interpret objects through geometric lines and faces, yet he went beyond morphological exploration to create works that highlighted his interest in light and color. The dynamic of light fragmented into band shapes displays a sense of nature on a geometric canvas. During the 1980s, Lee organized such divided colored faces more minutely throughout the canvas to present a knitted color field reminiscent of woven fabric. Since then he has consistently explored various geometric color abstractions.
