LEE U-Fan South Korea/Japan b.1936 With Winds 1990 Oil on canvas, 227.5 x 182cm The Kenneth and Yasuko Myer Collection of Contemporary Asian Art. Purchased 1998. Michael Myer and Ann Gamble Myer through and with the assistance of the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation Collection: Queensland Art Gallery Reproduced with permission

LEE U-fan

b. 1936, South Korea/ Japan

Lee U-fan is a painter and sculptor who arrived at his practice though the study of comparative philosophy. He was born in 1936 in Seoul and has lived in Japan since 1956. The artist was a founding member of the important Mono-ha (School of things) movement, which was formed as a response to rampant consumerism that emerged in Japan as it rapidly modernised after WWII. Mono-ha was a manifestation of Lee U-fan’s interest in developing a practice that deliberately turned away from this consumer based materialism – his ‘things’ are elemental, such as water, stones, slabs of metal and sky. This senior artist uses his paintings to explore the character of the painter’s brush stroke and to draw attention to what is ‘absent’ as much as what is ‘present’. Lee U-fan’s interest in Zen philosophy is manifest in the extremely meditative and concentrated nature of his work.