By Lee Hyo-won
Staff reporter
An art museum named after the Korean-Japanese painter Lee U-fan has opened in Japan.
The museum opened on May 30 on Naoshima Island, located in the Seto Inland Sea. The island is known for its batch of contemporary art galleries and cultural activities and attracts some 300,000 visitors each year. Major attractions include the gallery-hotel Benesse House and the radical underground Chichu Art Museum.
The new art space was designed by renowned Japanese architect Tadao Ando to blend into the surrounding nature. The project was funded by Benesse Holdings, the publishing company that sponsored the creation of Benesse House and Chichu Art Museum.
The museum will display Lee's paintings and sculptures, from his latest works to those that date back to the 1970s.
Lee is an avant-garde minimalist who is known as the leader of Monoha, the first Japanese art school to achieve international prominence. Lee challenged Eurocentric thought in 1960s postwar Japan, and sought to depict the relationship between materials and perceptions rather than expression.
He was born in South Gyeongsang Province in 1936. He dropped out of Seoul National University's fine arts college in 1956 and earned a degree in philosophy at Nihon University in Japan. He has taught at Tama Art University in Tokyo.
Next year a retrospective of his work will be held at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.