Lee Jae Sam

Lee Jae Sam was born in 1960 in South Korea; the specific city or province of his birth is not documented in the sources reviewed. He earned a BFA in Fine Arts from Gangneung National University in 1984 and an MFA from Hongik University in 1989, both in South Korea.

He works almost entirely in charcoal, a material his galleries describe using the Korean term geom-muk, or black ink, whose dense, layered surfaces reveal color and depth beneath an apparently monochrome black. His recurring subjects, moonlit pine trees, plum blossoms, waterfalls, and bamboo, are drawn from the classical Korean landscape tradition and reworked entirely in charcoal on canvas or paper.

In 2000 he was named among the Korea Culture and Arts Foundation's Featured Exhibitions of the Year. He held studio residencies at the Ieyoung Contemporary Art Museum from 2003 to 2005, as a Korea Culture and Arts Foundation Residency Artist in 2007, and at Gana Art Center's Jangheung Atelier from 2006 to 2008.

His documented exhibition history includes group showings at Mimesis Art Museum, Korea, in 2017; HAEUM Museum of Art, Korea, and MAD Museum of Art and Design, Singapore, in 2016; and SHIN Museum of Art and Lotte Gallery in 2015. His work is held in the collections of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul Museum of Art, Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, Cheongnamdae, and Mimesis Art Museum, along with corporate collections including Hana Bank and Kolon Group. Public sources give no indication that Lee Jae Sam has died; he is treated here as living as of 2026-07-18.

No verifiable, named-critic quotation about Lee Jae Sam in a major outlet could be located, so this section draws on institutional and gallery framing rather than press criticism. Representing platforms and Korean art databases consistently describe him as a leading figure in Korean charcoal painting, emphasizing his technical facility for coaxing depth, light, and hidden color out of an ostensibly monochrome medium, and his recurring subjects of moonlit pine, plum blossom, waterfall, and bamboo drawn from the classical Korean landscape tradition. In the absence of accessible critical essays under a named author, the clearest independent validation of his standing comes from institutional recognition, including the Korea Culture and Arts Foundation's 2000 Featured Exhibitions of the Year distinction and his subsequent residencies at the Ieyoung Contemporary Art Museum, the Korea Culture and Arts Foundation, and Gana Art Center.

No verified public auction sale price for a work by Lee Jae Sam could be confirmed in the sources reviewed. MutualArt records his earliest documented auction appearance as Beyond There at Seoul Auction in 2012, noting it sold below its mid-estimate, though the realized price is not disclosed. A separate Christie's lot for a charcoal work titled Dalbit (Moonshine), catalogued to Lee Jae Sam, born 1960, is also documented, again without a disclosed sale price or date. Absent a documented price for either lot, no auction record and no historical price trend can be published for this artist at this time; any figure presented elsewhere as his auction high should be independently verified before use.

No catalogue raisonne exists for this artist, and no certificate-of-authenticity program was identified in the sources reviewed, so buyers should verify individual works through exhibiting galleries and auction house records. No single current representing gallery could be confirmed; Art Ground Hepta in Seoul lists and appears to sell his work, and Opera Gallery Seoul has featured him in the past, though neither relationship is documented as exclusive representation. Most importantly, no confirmed priced auction result exists in the sources reviewed, so collectors should treat any secondary-market price they encounter with caution until it is verified against an auction house record, and should weigh his museum placements and Korean institutional recognition, rather than auction history, as the sturdier signal of his standing.