“The land we live in itself is art”

Artist Lee Han-woo opens ‘50 years of painting retrospective’

“What I really want to do is to draw this land properly and leave it behind.”

Artist Lee Han-woo (78, photo), who enjoys drawing ‘Beautiful Korean Mountains’ with colors close to the five cardinal colors and unique and simplified objects. From the 20th to the 29th, he held the 'Beautiful Korean Mountain Exhibition' at the Hangaram Art Museum at Seoul Arts Center and Gallery Me in Cheongdam-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, from the 20th to the 29th. Yoon Galleryat ‘A small feast in spring’ A retrospective exhibition of 50 years of painting will be held under two themes in three exhibition halls. This exhibition will feature over 200 works that represent half a century of his artistic career, from his early works to his most recent works.

Artist Lee Han-woo, who was born and raised in Tongyeong, has 50 years of painting experience divided into periods 1 to 3. In the first period, he worked as a teacher in Tongyeong and Geoje for 15 years, studied art on his own, and won the Minister of Education Award at the National Exhibition, making his name known. The works at this time were mainly strict and academic still lifes in the style of Cézanne. In the second period, natural landscapes were expressed in a dreamlike manner, and from the 1980s onwards, in the third period, he presented 'Our Beautiful Rivers and Mountains', a series of unique landscapes using thick black lines and five colors.

Our rivers and mountains that he depicted on canvas are extremely simple and warm. The warm coloring and the composition of mountains, fields, houses, and trees gathered together neatly, ignoring perspective, are cozy and friendly. The beautiful and clear images of the Dadohae and Korean rural areas, which he always paid attention to, were simply captured in works such as ‘Landscape with a view of the sea’. Although Lee Hwabaek works with Western painting materials, he shows an extremely Oriental world of painting.