Lee Kang So valuation
Korean avant-garde artist, born in 1943, of the chalk-footed chicken of 1975 and of fast, breathing brushstroke paintings.
Lee Kang So was born in Daegu in 1943 and graduated from the painting department of Seoul National University in 1965, then took part in the avant-garde groups and exhibitions that reshaped Korean art in the 1970s.
What a work by Lee Kang So is worth
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Bio
Lee Kang So was born in Daegu in 1943 and graduated from the painting department of Seoul National University in 1965, then took part in the avant-garde groups and exhibitions that reshaped Korean art in the 1970s. He worked across performance, installation, photography, print, painting and sculpture. At the Paris Biennale of 1975 he tethered a live chicken to a wooden feeder in a circle of powdered chalk and let its footprints make the work, a mark-making taken out of the artist's hands that made his name abroad. His early paintings pulled threads from rough hemp canvas to open and pucker the surface; from the 1980s he turned to the brushstroke itself, in oil on canvas rather than ink on paper, laying down quick, layered strokes from which spare images of birds, deer, boats, mountains and houses emerge. Since 2010 he has painted the Serenity series, in which the strokes follow his breathing and the flow of energy the East Asian tradition calls qi. He has also made ceramics by throwing lumps of clay into the air and letting them fall into shape.
The paintings since the 1980s, and the Serenity canvases, make up most of his market, alongside prints, ceramics and works on paper. His performances and installations of the 1970s survive mainly as photographs and documents, which need a clear record of when and how they were printed. A work's date, series and exhibition history, and a provenance through Thaddaeus Ropac or his Korean galleries, are the reference points.
Daegu, Paris and the National Museum
The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul gave him a major exhibition in 2024, which moved to the Daegu Art Museum in 2025.
He has also been shown at Tate Modern, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Musée d'art moderne et contemporain in Saint-Étienne, and his work is in the Victoria and Albert Museum.
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