This painting by minimalist artist Lee Ufan has been discovered in an attic in south-western France by an expert who had actually turned up at the property to buy some wine.

It turned out that the French artist was friends had known Lee Ufan some 45 years earlier and the pair had swapped some of their work with the artwork now set to fetch up to EUR 700,000 at an upcoming auction.

French Auctioneer Emmanuel Layan, 40, who discovered the painting, spoke to Real Press in an exclusive interview, saying that he had originally gone to a retired French artist’s home in the city of Cognac, in the Charente department, in south-western France, “to appraise some wine”.

The numbered piece, called “From Point (in Paris)”, has been valued at between EUR 400,000 and EUR 700,000 (GBP 345,500 and GBP 604,600) and was painted by Lee Ufan, 84. It is set to go on auction in Bordeaux on 20th June.

Layan said: “We had been asked by a man’s son to appraise some wine in his father’s cellar.”

The auctioneer said that the man mentioned that his father, who has remained anonymous, was a retired painter with quite a collection.

So they went to the attic of the rural farmhouse where the paintings were stored and Layan said that he immediately knew that this was a remarkable painting, just by seeing it, a hunch that was confirmed after spotting Lee Ufan’s signature on it.

Layan said that some research revealed that the French artist and Lee Ufan had both been in Paris and in the city of Anvers in 1976, where they had given each other some of their work. The French artist retired in the 1980s, and Lee Ufan has since become a famous name in the painting world.

Lee Ufan is a Korean minimalist painter whose long career has seen him displays paintings all over the world, from his first exhibition in 1967 in Japan, to showing his work at a Tate Liverpool exhibition in 1992, to Paris in 1997, among other locations. In 2011, his Marking Infinity work was shown at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. His work continues to be shown all over the world, including in 2020 in Japan at the STARS: Six Contemporary Artists from Japan to the World exhibition in Mori Art Museum in Tokyo.

The French auction had originally been scheduled to take place in March but due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, it was rescheduled and is now set to take place in Bordeaux on 20th June.