Lee Daiwon was born in Seoul and graduated from Kyung Sung Imperial University law school in Seoul in 1945. His first one-person exhibition was at the Dong Wha Gallery in Seoul in 1957. He had a one-person exhibition at the Asia center in Tokyo in 1960, and eight one-person exhibitions at the Gallery Hyundai in Seoul between 1975 and 1995. His work was exhibited in the Salon d'Automne at the Grand Palais in Paris in 1981 and in 1992 in "Flow from the Far East" at the Barbican Center, London. He taught painting at Hong Ik University in Seoul and was President of the Academy of Arts in Korea in 1993.