report

Works by the Samsung family on display at the National Museum of Korea

Audio 01:17

“The Thinning at Mount Inwang after the Rain” is a landscape work by Korean painter Jeong Seon in 1751. © CC/Ho-Am Art Museum

Text by: RFI Follow

2 mins

Just a year ago, the heirs to the Samsung empire offered the South Korean state 23,000 works of art, including those by Gauguin, Dali, Picasso and Monet.

Part of this impressive collection is on display at the National Museum of Korea.

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With our correspondent in Seoul,

Nicolas Rocca

A smell of tea to invite us into the house of the collector.

This is how the exhibition begins, presenting 355 of the 23,000 pieces donated by the Samsung family to lighten their tax burden.

With the death of its former leader 

Lee Kun-hee

in 2020, the Samsung group must pay an impressive inheritance tax estimated at 9 billion euros.

“

It was very symbolic for me as a curator to have access to such a vast collection and to be able to create a simple story with it,

” says Lee Jae-hou, the exhibition's curator

.

There were pieces from different eras, different genres and that's what made the experience very pleasant.

»

Among the masterpieces, many national treasures such as an ancestral bell, Buddhist works, and

The Thinning at Mount Inwang after the Rain

.

A mythical painting of a mountain which is just as mythical in the Korean imagination.

But also more modern works, and for the first time in the country a painting from the

Water Lilies

series by Claude Monet.

“

We imagined the garden and the pond at Giverny as it was painted by Monet as being the back of the collector's house,

explains

Lee Jae-hou.

 And so, after visiting his house, we go into the garden.

We also wanted visitors to listen to Debussy, a contemporary of Monet when they look at the painting

.

»

A piece that does not fail to attract the Korean public.

Online tickets are already sold out for the first month of an exhibition that will end next August.

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  • South Korea

  • Culture

  • Exposure