Seund Ja Rhee (also transcribed as Seongja Lee; June 3, 1918 – March 8, 2009) was a South Korean painter, engraver, draughtswoman, and illustrator. She also designed tapestries and mosaics. She was a prolific artist with more than 1,000 paintings, 700 prints, 250 ceramics, and numerous drawings. She exhibited mainly in France and in South Korea, with 84 solo exhibitions and almost 300 group exhibitions during her lifetime. In 1958, she moved to Tourrettes-sur-Loup, French Riviera (France) where she finally built the "Milky Way", a large

atelier An atelier () is the private workshop or studio of a professional artist in the fine or decorative arts or an architect, where a principal master and a number of assistants, students, and apprentices can work together producing fine art or vi ...

and exhibition room.

Biography

Born in

Jinju Jinju (; ) is a city in South Gyeongsang Province, South Korea. It was the location of the first (1592) and second (1593) Sieges of Jinju by Japanese forces during the Imjin War. The Republic of Korea Air Force Education and Training Comman ...

, Keishōnan-dō,

Korea, Empire of Japan From 1910 to 1945, Korea was ruled by the Empire of Japan under the name Chōsen (), the Japanese reading of "Joseon". Japan first took Korea into its sphere of influence during the late 1800s. Both Korea (Joseon) and Japan had been under polic ...

, Rhee studied in Jinju Girls' High School before moving to Japan to attend Jissen Women's University in Tokyo in 1938. In 1938, she returned home and married. In 1951, she was separated from her three sons by the

Korean War The Korean War (25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953) was an armed conflict on the Korean Peninsula fought between North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea; DPRK) and South Korea (Republic of Korea; ROK) and their allies. North Korea was s ...

. In the same year, she left for Paris, where she entered the

Académie de la Grande Chaumière The Académie de la Grande Chaumière () is an art school in the Montparnasse district of Paris, France. History The school was founded in 1904 by the Catalan painter Claudio Castelucho on the rue de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, near the A ...

in 1953 to study under

Yves Brayer Yves Brayer (18 November 1907 – 29 May 1990) was a French painter known for his paintings of everyday life. He was born in Versailles (city), Versailles. He studied in Paris at the academies in Montparnasse starting in 1924, and then at the É ...

and Henri Goetz. Rhee started to develop an interest in woodcuts and engraving while visiting

Stanley William Hayter Stanley William Hayter (27 December 1901 – 4 May 1988) was an English painter and master printmaker associated in the 1930s with surrealism and from 1940 onward with abstract expressionism. Regarded as one of the most significant printmakers ...

's "

Atelier 17 Atelier 17 was an art school and studio that was influential in the teaching and promotion of printmaking in the 20th century. Originally located in Paris, the studio relocated to New York City during the years surrounding World War II. It moved ...

." In 1958, she moved to Tourrettes sur Loup, French Riviera, where she used a stone shepherd's cottage for her atelier. In 1996, she built the "Milky Way", a larger atelier, in the Korean style. In 1991, Rhee was appointed the Chevalier of the

Ordre des Arts et des Lettres The Order of Arts and Letters () is an order of France established on 2 May 1957 by the Minister of Culture. Its supplementary status to the was confirmed by President Charles de Gaulle in 1963. Its purpose is the recognition of significant ...

in France. The Seundja Rhee Foundation was established in 2009 in Korea to preserve and promote her art.

Artwork and exhibitions

Rhee's style is primarily decorative

abstraction Abstraction is a process where general rules and concepts are derived from the use and classifying of specific examples, literal (reality, real or Abstract and concrete, concrete) signifiers, first principles, or other methods. "An abstraction" ...

, utilizing geometric patterns and discreet colors. She was known to incorporate Korean symbols and script in her artworks. It has also been argued that, starting from the 1950s, her style changed both formally and conceptually: not only “her bold and expressionistic brushwork began to dismantle into tiny strokes, forming color planes,” but feminist allusions started to emerge, leading to a work that “was chiefly about experiences distinctive to women.” Her work has been featured in various collective exhibitions in museums and galleries, including Salon de la

Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts (SNBA; ; ) was the term under which two groups of French artists united, the first for some exhibitions in the early 1860s, the second since 1890 for annual exhibitions. 1862 Established in 1862 by the painter a ...

, Paris (1956), the International Biennale of Ljubljana (1963, 1965, 1967), the Geneva Museum of Art and History (1965), and the International Biennale of Engravings in Buenos Aires (1968, 1970, 1972). Rhee's solo exhibitions have appeared in both European and Asian art institutions.

Tributes

On 3 June 2016, Google celebrated Rhee Seund Ja’s 98th birthday with a doodle.

References

External links

Art-cote magazine d'art et d'architecture de Florence Canarelli

with

Michel Butor Michel Butor (; 14 September 1926 – 24 August 2016) was a French poet, novelist, teacher, essayist, art critic and translator. Life and work Michel Marie François Butor was born in Mons-en-Barœul, a suburb of Lille, the third of seven chil ...

(the entry is located at Seundja, not at Rhee)
Bibliography of writings by Gaston Diehl on Seund Ja Rhee

Catalogue of the exhibition at the BMVR of Nice
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rhee, Seund Ja 1918 births 2009 deaths Alumni of the Académie de la Grande Chaumière People from Jinju 20th-century South Korean painters 20th-century South Korean women artists 20th-century women artists