Biography
Lee Dongyoub was born in 1946 and completed his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Hongik University. He gained significant attention as a young artist in the 1970s with his white monochrome paintings, and has been regarded as a central figure in Korean monochrome painting. His work embodies the concepts of emptiness and void, transcendence, and harmony with nature. The lines created using gradient techniques reflect the artist’s view of all existence as temporal entities, embodying the principles of the cycle of creation and extinction. The lines in his paintings represent the spaces, gaps, and boundaries between objects, forms, and surfaces, which he refers to as the space of emptiness. Unlike the white theories of Lee Ufan or Park Seo-bo, Dongyoub Lee’s white pursues a uniquely Korean whiteness. His artistic world aims for a space of nothingness, a realm transcending both fullness and emptiness. Through this nothingness, he seeks to reach the essence of nature, which is both emptiness and void, and transcendence.
