Lee Ufan (b. 1936, Haman-gun, South Korea) is an artist, philosopher, and writer, and one of the central figures in contemporary Asian art. After moving to Japan in 1956, he studied philosophy at Nihon University in Tokyo and, in the late 1960s, became the leading theorist and practitioner of Mono-ha, a movement that explored the relationships between natural and industrial materials, space, and perception. At the same time, his painting—from the From Point and From Line series to Correspondence and Dialogue—developed a distinctive language based on repetition, gesture, and the relationship between presence and emptiness.
From the 1970s onward, Lee exhibited extensively across Japan, Europe, and the United States. In 1971, he participated in the Paris Youth Biennale, contributing to the international recognition of Mono-ha; in 1977, he was invited to documenta 6 in Kassel. Subsequent major museum presentations include exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Korea, the Kunstmuseum Bonn, the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume in Paris, and the Yokohama Museum of Art. In 2007, he presented Resonance at the Venice Biennale, while in 2011 the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York presented Lee Ufan: Marking Infinity, his first major retrospective in the United States.
Among his most significant projects is the Lee Ufan Museum in Naoshima, opened in 2010 and designed by architect Tadao Ando in close collaboration with the artist. The museum brings architecture, sculpture, nature, and space together into a unified experience. In 2014, Lee was also invited to create a major site-specific installation at the Palace of Versailles.
His works are held in major international collections, including those of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, as well as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which acquired Cut Up (1972) in 2025. The Dia Art Foundation also holds a significant group of Lee’s works: following the acquisition of three sculptures from the Mono-ha period in 2017, Dia announced the addition of eight important paintings to its collection in 2026, further expanding its representation of the artist.
Throughout his career, Lee has received major international recognition, including the UNESCO Prize in 2000 and the Praemium Imperiale for Painting in 2001. His artistic and theoretical practice continues to revolve around the idea of encounter: rather than representing the world, his work creates conditions in which materials, space, time, and the viewer can enter into relation.
In 2017, Galleria d'Arte Maggiore g.a.m. presented a dialogue between works by Lee Ufan and Giorgio Morandi on the occasion of The Armory Show in New York. The dialogue was featured and discussed not only in The New York Times, but also in the book Giorgio Morandi / Mark Rothko, published by Dario Cimorelli Editore for the Fondazione Calarota, which conceived and produced the entire project.