Lee Jung Seob (A.K.A Dae-hyang) began his studies with Lim Yong-ryun, a western-style painter, at Osan School in Jeongju. In 1936, he moved to japan to enter the department of western painting at the Bunka School in Tokyo. There, he received an art training based on European modernism. He returned to Korea and stayed in Wonsan when the Asia-Pacific War broke out. In 1941, with other artists like Moon Hak-soo and Lee Que-dae, he organized the Joseon New Artists Association with the aim of creating a Korean nationalist aesthetics. With the eruption of the Korean War a few years later, he enlisted as a military artist. A miserable refugee life forced him to send his family to Japan in 1952, and the subsequent solitude and self-deprivation induced bouts of schizophrenia. His art, in the early period, dealt mainly with nativist themes based on a nationalist consciousness but gradually developed into a unique expressionistic style that used Fauvist techniques to interpret personal themes like love of and separation from family. As details of his dramatic life came to be known to the public posthumously, Lee finally received his much deserved fame, and today, with his contemporary artist Park Soo-Keun, is considered to be one of the greatest modern Korean artists.