Title of art	나무-옐로우/Tree: Yellow			Sector	Painting (회화)
Art specifications	79?54.5cm			Material technique	Acrylic on paper
Collection year	2001			Production year	1989
Gallery	Seoul Museum of Art			Artist	Lee, Sang-Goog
Description of art	“If I had a hard time producing my art due to problems caused by class conflict, I always thought that I should be the first to solve them. I embarked on a search for subjects that (could) resolve the conflicts stemming from differences in class, status, and aesthetic consciousness, and along the way, I came to focus more on themes like mountains and nature.”？ Lee Sang-guk “Tree” (1989) was produced during a transitional period when Lee’s interest shifted from scenes of daily life such as shanty towns and factory districts to natural scenery. He thought that simple subject matters were enough to convey his reflections, emotions and experiences, and attempted to express his era by painting nature. In particular, trees were one of his consistent objects of exploration, through which he sought to discover the traces of history. This work of art, a collage composed of a brown base pasted with pieces of Korean mulberry paper hanji, is completed by creating a sketch on location and employing the techniques of woodblock print and oil painting. The shades of blue that explode from the tree branches seem to embody a strong qi, which means, energy force, while the spots on the tree symbolize the pains and wounds of the times, demonstrating Lee’s compositional method of expressing the zeitgeist through poetic sentiment.
Address	61, Deoksugung-gil, Jung-gu, Seoul			Source	Seoul Metropolitan Government