Lee Kun-heeㆍHong Ra-hee Masterpiece
The interior and garden of the 16th-century building were remodeled by Carlo Scalpa and Mario Botta. Entrance to Yoo Young-guk’s exhibition hall on the first floor of the Querini Stampalia Foundation, a space where tradition and modernity harmonize. Photo by Yoo Young-kuk Art and Culture Foundation
Although he said, “My paintings will never be sold during my lifetime,” the first buyer was Samsung Chairman Lee Byung-cheol. The paintings kept by those who recognized him early on, from the Lee Kun-hee Collection and Leeum Museum of Art to art enthusiast RM, also came to Venice. Following his first overseas solo exhibition in New York last year, he will be holding his first solo exhibition in Europe during the 60th Venice Biennale.
Introduction to ‘Yoo Young-guk: Journey to the Infinite World’ held at the Querini Stampalia Foundation in Venice, Italy. Photo by Yoo Young-kuk Art and Culture Foundation
Representatives from major art museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Tate Modern in the UK, visited the opening of the exhibition and said, “It is dazzlingly bright, fascinating, and has a strange balance” (Art News). “Korea’s Mark Rothko shows Korea’s mountainous terrain in beautiful gradients of deep blue, bold orange and rich red.”(Freeze) received favorable local reviews. Why is it Yoo Young-guk now?
1. A person who fished and brewed a brewery
A gondola passes leisurely next to a photo of Yoo Young-guk in his 20s hanging at the entrance to the Querini Scampalia Foundation in Venice. Photo by Yoo Young-kuk Art and Culture Foundation
What is the young man carrying the camera in the photo looking at? This is Yoo Young-guk, a student studying in Tokyo around 1940. It was around this time that I graduated from the Department of Western Painting at a cultural academy with a liberal academic culture and was active in the Free Artists Association, a Japanese avant-garde artist group. He also graduated from photography school with the intention of making a living by opening a photo lab. But how weak is individual planning in the midst of colonialism and war. Yoo Young-guk probably didn’t know that he would be isolated from the flower garden for a long time and struggling to make a living.
1. A man who caught fish and brewed a brew (reading time: 140 seconds)
2. “I hate Geumnon and I hate Geumsan. “I’m going to be angry” (190 seconds to this point)
3. “My abstract paintings will never sell in my lifetime”… The first collector is Lee Byung-cheol (260 seconds)
