Lee Jungseop--art and man--has been a standard bearer of Korean post-colonialism for fifty years. Dead at forty after acute personal struggles, he is the stuff of legend, but his art has stood the test of time, communing with a poignant past as a modern spirit.

Fighting or fuming bulls are Lee's metaphor for resolve in the face of obstacle. He is said to have been inspired by the animated wall paintings of swirling dragons and beasts in the Goguryeo royal tombs of the mid-sixth century. He was a great admirer of the work of Georges Rouault, which he encountered at art school in Japan in the 1930s. In one of his paintings, the bulls are facing off so furiously they appear as one mass of energy emitting pink sparks from a pulsating bluChristie's Auction Records
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