The masterpiece "Cow and child" by national painter Lee Jung-seob has appeared on the auction market for the first time in 70 years.
According to the art auction industry on the 12th, K Auction will auction 126 artworks, including "Cow and child," at its headquarters in Sinsa-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, on the afternoon of the 24th. The starting bid for "Cow and child" is 2.5 billion won.
Lee Jung-seob's 1954 work "Cow and child" depicts a cow lying with its head on the ground and a child seated between the cow's hind legs. First unveiled at Midopa Gallery in 1955, it has been carefully kept by a single owner for 70 years. It has been consistently featured in major exhibitions, including a 1972 memorial exhibition at Hyundai Gallery and a large-scale retrospective at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in 2016, and is regarded as a work that represents Lee's artistic world.
A total of 126 works are scheduled to be offered in this auction. The combined amount of the starting bids or estimates for these works comes to about 15 billion won. Representative modern and contemporary artists' works will also be on the block, including Park Soo-keun's signature piece "Mountain" (starting bid 1.3 billion won) and Kim Tschang-yeul's "Water drops" series.
Only about 10 pieces from Lee Jung-seob's "Cow" series remain today, and since most are held by museums and institutions, the chances of them coming to auction are extremely rare. A "Cow" piece sold for 4.7 billion won at auction in 2018 set the record high, and a new record is anticipated in this sale.
The consigned works can be viewed free of charge at the K Auction exhibition hall from the 13th to the 24th, and on auction day bids can be placed through various methods, including online live.