Lee U-Fan

Lee U-Fan (or Ou-Fan, or U-Hwan, born 1936) is a Korean born Japanese minimalist painter and sculptor [ [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1248/is_7_91/ai_104836759 Felicity Fenner, "Art in America", July, 2003] ,] and leader of the Japanese material school Monoha in the late 1960s. Lee advocated a methodology of de-westernization and demodernization in both theory and practice as an antidote to the Eurocentric thought of 1960s postwar Japanese society.

The Japanese avant-garde group Monoha was Japan's first contemporary art movement to gain international recognition. The Monoha school of thought rejected Western notions of representation, choosing to focus on the relationships of materials and perceptions rather than on expression or intervention. The movement's goal was to embrace the world at large and encourage the fluid coexistence of numerous beings, concepts, and experiences. Lee U-fan's position in the philosophy department a Nihon University in Tokyo earned him a distinguished role as the movement's spokesman.

His work was included in the 1992 Tate Liverpool exhibition, "Working With Nature: Traditional Thought in Contemporary Art from Korea", the first major survey of Korean art shown in Britain. [ [http://www.tate.org.uk/liverpool/exhibitions/working-with-nature/default.shtm Tate Liverpool exhibition information] ]

His work is held in the permanent collection of the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art. [ [http://mothra.rerf.or.jp/ENG/Hiroshima-old/Art/Hiroshima-City-Museum.html Hiroshama City Museum of Contemporary Art website] ]

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