---
title: "Lee U-fan: results at LLB Auction"
source: LLB Auction
canonical: "https://www.llb-auction.com/artists/lee-u-fan"
currency: EUR
price_basis: "hammer, excluding buyer's premium and VAT"
scope: results at this auction house only
---

# Lee U-fan

LLB Auction has offered 4 lots by Lee U-fan since June 2025 and sold one for a hammer price of €10,000.

| Fact | Value |
|---|---|
| Born | 1936 |
| Lots offered at LLB Auction | 4 |
| Lots sold | 1 |
| Range of prices realised | €10,000 to €10,000 |
| Median price realised | €10,000 |

## Lots

| Work | Medium | Sale | Date | Estimate | Hammer |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| From Point Ⅰ | 5-color screenprint on Somerset Tub Sized Radiant White 600gsm paper | The August Edit | 25 August 2026 | €10,000 to €15,000 | €10,000 |
| From a Revelation 2 | Print | Contemporary Art Spring 2026 | 26 May 2026 | €4,000 to €8,000 | Not sold |
| From Point Ⅰ | Screenprint | Contemporary Art: Autumn Collection 2025 | 26 October 2025 | €10,000 to €15,000 | Not sold |
| Untitled | Print | Contemporary Art June 2025 | 29 June 2025 | €8,000 to €15,000 | Not sold |

## About Lee U-fan

### Life and work

Lee Ufan was born in 1936 in Haman County, in the south of what is now South Korea, and grew up under Japanese colonial rule. His first contact with art was ink brush painting, taught at home by a Confucian grandfather and continued as a schoolboy in Seoul. He enrolled at the College of Fine Arts of Seoul National University but left after two months, crossing to Japan on a family errand and staying on at an uncle's suggestion. He took a degree in philosophy at Nihon University in Tokyo, reading Heidegger closely, and spent his early working years as a critic and a philosopher as much as an artist. He showed on his own for the first time at the Sato Gallery in Tokyo in 1967.

### Mono ha and the writing

Lee is unusual among artists of his generation in that his reputation rests on his essays as firmly as on his objects. His study of the sculptor Nobuo Sekine, and the text From Object to Being that followed, argued for presenting the world as it is rather than representing it, and for an encounter in which the viewer, not the artist, activates the work. Those pieces were seized on by young Japanese artists and gave the loose group around him its programme. Mono ha, the school of things, rejected the European idea of making in favour of placing: a rock, a steel plate, a sheet of glass, set in relation and left to be met. He taught at Tama Art University in Tokyo for more than three decades and holds a chair there as professor emeritus.

### The painting

His best known paintings come from two series begun in the early seventies, From Point and From Line. In each the brush is charged once with mineral pigment ground into animal skin glue, then drawn across or down the canvas until the paint is spent, so that a single stroke fades from a thick ridge to nothing. Lee calls that fading yohaku, the art of emptiness. The Correspondence canvases that followed reduce the picture to one or two grey blue marks on a large white field, and the Dialogue series, made with very wide flat brushes, to a single square of paint that is in fact many layers. He completes no more than about twenty five works in a year.

### Sculpture and public work

Since the early seventies every sculpture has carried the title Relatum. The form is consistent: upright iron plates or glass panes meeting stones laid flat, arranged so that the relation between the made and the unmade is the subject. He represented Korea at the Bienal de Sao Paulo in 1969 and was invited to Documenta in Kassel in 1977. British audiences met the work at Tate Liverpool in 1992. Museum solo shows followed at the Jeu de Paume in Paris in 1997, the Kunstmuseum Bonn in 2001 and the Yokohama Museum of Art in 2005. The Venice showing of 2007 widened his audience sharply, and the Guggenheim in New York gave him his first major American retrospective in 2011. He was the guest of the Palace of Versailles in 2014, took over the whole Hirshhorn plaza in Washington in 2019, and installed in the Rijksmuseum garden in Amsterdam in 2024. Two museums bearing his name, both designed by Tadao Ando, stand on Naoshima and in Arles.

### A note on the name

The house catalogues him as Lee U Fan, with the given name split across two syllables. That is a romanisation variant of the same artist and not a different person; the form used by his galleries and by museums is Lee Ufan.

### The market

He is represented by Pace, Lisson and Scai the Bathhouse. At Bonhams in Hong Kong in 2017 a small From Point of the mid eighties, pigment on canvas, carrying a Tokyo Gallery label on the reverse and a note of confirmation from that gallery, made a strong six figure sum in Hong Kong dollars. The early series command the most, size matters less than period, and provenance running back to the Tokyo dealers who showed him first carries real weight.

## Market at LLB Auction

| Figure | Value |
|---|---|
| Share sold | 25% |
| Record hammer | €10,000 (From Point Ⅰ) |
| Hammer vs low estimate | 1.00x |
| Lots above high estimate | 0 |

### Prices by medium

| Medium | Offered | Sold | Lowest hammer | Median hammer | Highest hammer |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Print | 2 | 0 |  |  |  |
| 5-Color Screenprint On Somerset Tub Sized Radiant White 600gsm Paper | 1 | 1 | €10,000 | €10,000 | €10,000 |
| Screenprint | 1 | 0 |  |  |  |

### Year by year

| Year | Offered | Sold | Total hammer |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 2 | 0 | €0 |
| 2026 | 2 | 1 | €10,000 |

## Public auction records

Other auction houses published these results, cited from the linked sources. They are separate from the
results of LLB Auction.

| House | Date | Work | Price (basis) | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bonhams | 6 June 2017 |  | HK$600,000 (premium) | https://www.bonhams.com/auction/24014/lot/13/lee-ufan-b-1936-from-point/ |

## Career

### Exhibitions

| Exhibition | Venue | Year |
|---|---|---|
| First solo exhibition | Sato Gallery | 1967 |
| Bienal de Sao Paulo, representing Korea | Bienal de Sao Paulo | 1969 |
| Documenta VI | Museum Fridericianum | 1977 |
| Working With Nature: Traditional Thought in Contemporary Art from Korea | Tate Liverpool | 1992 |
| Lee Ufan | Jeu de Paume | 1997 |
| Retrospective | Kunstmuseum Bonn | 2001 |
| Lee Ufan: The Art of Margins | Yokohama Museum of Art | 2005 |
| Resonance, Venice Biennale | Palazzo Palumbo Fossati | 2007 |
| Lee Ufan: Marking Infinity | Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum | 2011 |
| Guest artist of the contemporary art programme | Palace of Versailles | 2014 |
| Lee Ufan: Open Dimension | Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden | 2019 |
| Lee Ufan in the Rijksmuseum Garden | Rijksmuseum | 2024 |

## Questions

### How many works by Lee U-fan has LLB Auction sold?

Between June 2025 and August 2026, LLB Auction sold 1 of the 4 lots by Lee U-fan it offered (25%).

### What is the record price for Lee U-fan at LLB Auction?

The record is €10,000 for From Point Ⅰ, in the sale The August Edit of 25 August 2026, against an estimate of €10,000 to €15,000.

### Do works by Lee U-fan sell above their estimate at LLB Auction?

0 of the 1 lots sold went above their high estimate. On average the hammer reached 1 times the low estimate.

### Do these prices include the buyer’s premium?

The prices on this page are hammer prices, before the buyer’s premium and VAT. The results page of each sale gives the price with premium of every lot sold.

### How do I get a valuation of a work by Lee U-fan?

Send photos of the work, of its signature and of any certificate through the valuation form. Lyna Brahami compares it with the results of Lee U-fan at the house and replies free of charge within 48 working hours.

## Sources

- LLB Auction catalogue (Proprietary)

## Valuations
Request a free valuation: https://www.llb-auction.com/sell