Lee Kang So

Lee Kang So was born in 1943 in Daegu, Korea. He graduated with a BFA in painting from the Department of Painting at Seoul National University in 1965. Through the 1970s he became a central figure in Korea's experimental art movement, working across painting, sculpture, installation, performance, photography, and printmaking, and taking part in artist circles associated with the era's avant-garde, including the New System (Shincheje) group. His international profile grew after a happening he presented at the 9th Paris Biennale in 1975, followed by participation in the 2nd Biennale of Sydney in 1976, the 10th International Biennial Exhibition of Prints in Tokyo the same year, and the 14th Sao Paulo Biennial in 1977.

In the 1980s and 1990s he spent time abroad, serving as a visiting artist at the State University of New York at Albany from 1985 to 1986, and later joining the international studio program at MoMA PS1 in New York from 1991 to 1992. He has continued to develop his practice since, moving between abstract, process-based ink and brush painting and the sculptural and installation work of his earlier years.

Recent years have brought a wave of institutional recognition. The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea presented the retrospective "Where the Wind Meets the Water" in Seoul from 2024 to 2025, and the Daegu Art Museum followed with "Flowing Water, Ongoing Experiment" from 2025 to 2026. He joined the roster of Thaddaeus Ropac in 2024 to 2025, one of the most prominent international galleries to take on a living Korean artist of his generation, while continuing a long-running relationship with Gallery Hyundai in Seoul and an active relationship with Tokyo Gallery plus BTAP. He has also received the Bogwan Order of Cultural Merit, one of the Republic of Korea's highest honors for contributions to culture and the arts; the exact year of the honor is not confirmed in current public sources. He currently lives and works in Anseong, Gyeonggi-do, Korea.

Museums and institutions describe Lee Kang So as a seminal figure in the evolution of contemporary Korean art, citing a distinctive body of work produced across six decades that moves between conceptual experimentation and painterly abstraction. His Bogwan Order of Cultural Merit and the near-simultaneous retrospectives at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art and the Daegu Art Museum from 2024 to 2026 have been widely treated as recognition of his role in Korea's postwar avant-garde.

Lee Kang So's market activity is concentrated primarily in Korea, where his auction history runs through won-denominated sales at domestic houses such as Seoul Auction and K Auction. Current public sources reviewed for this profile do not provide a verified, sourced all-time auction record for the artist, and no confirmed price, work title, house, or date could be established. International secondary-market data in US dollars is not consistently reported for this artist. Collectors should treat any unsourced circulating auction figures with caution until they can be confirmed against a primary auction-house record.

Lee Kang So's market sits earlier in its international development than his institutional standing might suggest. There is no published catalogue raisonne, and pricing data outside Korea is limited, so collectors should expect thinner, harder-to-verify comparables than for artists with deep US or European auction histories. His 2024 to 2025 move to Thaddaeus Ropac, alongside continuing representation through Gallery Hyundai and Tokyo Gallery plus BTAP, is the clearest signal of a maturing international market, but currency conversion, translation, and reporting gaps mean that any single auction result should be read with care.