Considered one of Korea’s most important 20th-century artists, Joong Seop Lee (b. 1916 in Pyeongannamdo; d. 1956 in Seoul) was born and raised during the Japanese colonial occupation of the peninsula and was educated in both Korea and Japan, graduating from art school in 1944 just prior to the end of World War II. He married the same year and had his first son in 1947 (the same year Korea gained its independence) and his second in 1949. With the start of the Korean War in 1950, he and his family fled south to Busan, and after struggling to make ends meet, his wife and children left for Japan in 1952.
Deeply saddened by his separation from his family and living in abject poverty, Lee made work informed by his tumultuous surroundings that would end in the division of the Korean peninsula and foretell of the emergent geopolitical order and alignments that shaped 20th-century Asia. The artist used to foil lining saved from cigarette packages to create Family in Paradise (Number 50), Fairyland (Number 57), and People Reading the Newspaper (Number 84)(all 1950-52). They are typical of a body of work often discussed in relation to letters and drawings he longingly sent to his family in Japan. The works were purchased by American diplomat Arthur McTaggart, who was stationed in Seoul and later donated them to New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 1956.
