On a personal exhibition of contemporary artist from South Korea's Lee Kwan-Ha represented about 60 paintings and drawings, executed with the end of 1970 to 2010

Today, September 1, in the halls of the Marble Palace Russian Museum opens a personal exhibition of contemporary artists from South Korea's Lee Kwang-Ha "Love Story". About 60 paintings and drawings created by the end of 1970 to 2010, will be first introduced in Russia. In each picture the author tells the audience a story about love - love story - the so-called all of his work.

Lee Kwang-Ha was born in 1942 in the IASP (Korea). In 1961 he entered, and in 1965 graduated from the Architecture Faculty of the University Honik in Seoul. Still a student, the artist began to take part in numerous exhibitions held in Korea, Japan, China, France, USA and other countries. Lee Kwang-Ha is the recipient of many art competitions, and in 2006 received an honorary artist of the National Society of Fine Arts in Paris. Exhibition at the Russian Museum - his first exhibition in Russia and fifteenth solo exhibition.

Works of Lee Kwan-ha based on a combination of two traditions - the geometric abstraction of classical Korean art. Abstraction defines the composition solution patterns, forms design, in which the artist stringing narrative elements. In making love story Lee Kwang-Ha frequently uses recognizable symbols of the traditional Korean art - the image of a crane, the mountains, a lotus flower and bamboo. Most frequently in the paintings there is an image of mandarin ducks - the most famous in the Far East, the symbol of lovers. These birds are choosing a partner for life. If one of the mandarin ducks are killed, the second died of boredom. The image of the ducks, nerazluchnits, which appeared in Chinese literature and widely used in Korea, is the literal embodiment of love story.

particularly noteworthy skill the artist to use color and texture. Already in the earliest love story, written in 1979, which is also represented in the exhibition, an abstract composition echoes the traditional Korean ceramics of Koryo era. Pale bluish-green tint painting Lee Kwang-Ha recalls "kingfisher color, characteristic of ceramic vessels and glazed. Texture painting says, on the one hand, the effect of pictorial discoveries, starting with the Russian avant-garde up to abstract expressionism, but on the other - about traditional Korean ceramics embossed molding and stamping

Thus, in the title of the work Lee Kwang-Ha is more than just a story about love. Behind this love story of the artist, for which the pair have become inseparable western and eastern traditions. In his pictorial compositions, plastic subordinate to the principles of modernism, there is an organic oriental ornaments, symbols, hieroglyphic writing. Li Kwan-ha boldly combines the fact that until recently seemed to be inconsistent - the traditional culture and emerged as a rejection of tradition as an abstraction.

about his works the artist Lee Kwang-Ha says: "The cycle of my works are" Love Story "tells the story of peace and love as the source from which grow the very history of life and its infinite changes».

exhibition will run until October 18, 2010.

Source: press release of the State Russian Museum