Around 140 Works by Painter Lee Jung-seob in Ulsan; Rare Exhibition Draws Strong Interest

【Financial News, Ulsan = Reporter Choi Su-sang】 “The Unfinished Story: Lee Jung-seob, the Nationally Beloved Painter,” jointly organized by the Ulsan Museum of Art and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, opened on the 15th. As a major retrospective of Lee Jung-seob (1916–1956), a painter who has been deeply loved in the history of modern and contemporary Korean art, the exhibition has drawn the attention of countless visitors since it opened.
According to the Ulsan Museum of Art on the 17th, the most remarkable aspect of this Lee Jung-seob exhibition is that major art institutions representing Korea and the artist’s family have brought masterpieces together in one place, united by deep trust.
Centered on 109 works from the historic Lee Kun-hee Collection: Lee Jung-seob, held by the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, the exhibition features around 140 works in total, including paintings, silver foil works, postcard paintings, letter paintings and archival records held by Leeum Museum of Art, the Jeju Lee Jung-seob Museum and the artist’s family.
The largest Lee Jung-seob exhibition previously held in Korea was “Lee Jung-seob: The Myth of a Century,” staged at the Deoksugung branch of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in 2016 to mark the centenary of his birth. That exhibition brought together around 200 works borrowed from around 60 collections across the country and institutions including The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, along with around 100 items of archival and other material, drawing considerable attention. Although the earlier centenary exhibition had more works in absolute terms, the Ulsan Museum of Art retrospective is regarded as a very rare exhibition with a different kind of concentrated depth.





The exhibition is organized around the places and periods the artist passed through, beginning with Tokyo and Wonsan and then moving to Jeju, Busan and Tongyeong, helping visitors better understand the works. The works are also grouped by type, including postcard paintings, silver foil works, letter paintings and paintings.
Highlights include the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art’s signature holdings “Bull,” “White Ox” and “Three People”; Leeum Museum of Art’s “Tongyeong Landscape”; and the Jeju Lee Jung-seob Museum’s “Landscape with Seopseom in View.” The exhibition also features works rarely seen by the public, including letter paintings from the family collection suffused with the artist’s deep longing for his family, and postcard paintings he made while courting his wife Masako during his studies in Tokyo.
One visitor shared this impression: “There are original works of the highest caliber that I’ve often encountered through books and the media, but there are also many works I’d never seen before, which was very exciting.”
The exhibition was organized as part of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism’s “Our Neighborhood Museum” program and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art’s “MMCA Regional Partnership” project. This Lee Jung-seob retrospective, set to become a landmark moment in Ulsan’s art history, runs through January 17 next year.
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