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, Var Tourrettes (; oc, Torretas) is a commune in the Var department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region in southeastern France. Tourrettes is one of a series of "perched villages" overlooking the plain between the southern Alps and the Estere ...

(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 v ...

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 Command is ...

Gyeongsangnam-do South Gyeongsang Province ( ko, 경상남도, translit=Gyeongsangnam-do, ) is a province in the southeast of South Korea. The provincial capital is at Changwon. It is adjacent to the major metropolitan center and port of Busan. The UNESCO World H ...

Korea under Japanese rule Between 1910 and 1945, Korea was ruled as a part of the Empire of Japan. Joseon Korea had come into the Japanese sphere of influence with the Japan–Korea Treaty of 1876; a complex coalition of the Meiji government, military, and business offic ...

, Rhee studied in Jinju Girls' High School before moving to Japan to attend

Jissen Women's University is a Japanese private women's college with its headquarters in 4-1-1 Ōsakaue, Hino, Tokyo, Japan. The school was founded by poet and educator Utako Shimoda in 1899. It was chartered as a university in 1949. Its University abbreviations are ...

in Tokyo in 1938. In 1938, she returned home and married. In 1951, she was separated from her three sons by the

Korean War , date = {{Ubl, 25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953 (''de facto'')({{Age in years, months, weeks and days, month1=6, day1=25, year1=1950, month2=7, day2=27, year2=1953), 25 June 1950 – present (''de jure'')({{Age in years, months, weeks a ...

. 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 Acadé ...

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. He studied in Paris at the academies in Montparnasse starting in 1924, and then at the École des Beaux-Art ...

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 printmaker associated in the 1930s with surrealism and from 1940 onward with abstract expressionism. Regarded as one of the most significant printmakers of ...

'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 during the years surrounding World War II. It moved back ...

." In 1958, she moved to Tourrettes-Sur-Loup, Var, 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 ''Ordre des Arts et des Lettres'' (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 ...

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 in its main sense is a conceptual process wherein general rules and concepts are derived from the usage and classification of specific examples, literal ("real" or "concrete") signifiers, first principles, or other methods. "An abstr ...

, 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; ; en, National Society of Fine Arts) 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 Es ...

, 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 childre ...

(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 South Korean women artists 20th-century women artists