Kim Whanki is hailed as one of the pioneers of the abstract painting on South Korea thanks to its soft color abstractions that fuse the traditional Korean theme with a western style influenced by Fernand Léger y mark rothko.
Born April 3, 1913 in South Jeolla, South Korea, his itinerant lifestyle, which saw him move from his homeland to Japan, France and finally to United States, reflects his quest to develop and express a unique abstract painting style.
Source: Whan-Ki Foundation-Whan-Ki Museum | Christie's
And it is that while some artists fill their work with hope, creating abstract universes that take us to a higher emotional plane, others like Kim are inspired by previous traditions, subtly updated or contextualized to create an art form that really is the time in which that lives.
The Korean modernist grew up in a family of wealthy landowners, and from a young age, made the decision to become an artist against his father's wishes, secretly boarding a ship bound for Japan in 1931 to be able to attend the Department of Fine Arts of the Nihon University.
It was there that he discovered European Modernism, Cubism and Fauvism, being fascinated by the work of Henri Matisse y Pablo Picasso.
When Kim returned to Seoul In 1937, he joined a group of leftist bohemian intellectuals that included the modernist poet Jeong ji-yong, the author Lee Tae Joon and the painter Kim Yong-Jun who caused a profound influence on the young artist, who supported him to found the radical movement in 1940 New realists with the painters Yoo young-kuk y Lee Gyu-sang, who sought to articulate the essence of nature through abstract art.
Despite living far from his family, he could not escape the heavy hand of his father, who forced him into a marriage that had him reporting his activities at home, but with the death of his father in 1942, Kim was able to leave the unhappy marriage. to whom he had been forced and marry the talented writer Byun dong-rim, who took the name of Kim hyang-an when they married, who later, in the 1970s, published a series of essays about his life with the artist.
Source: Whanki Museum
These years were of great creative boom for Korean talent, however, with the outbreak of the Korean war In 1950, Kim and Hyang-An paused their work and fled from Seoul to the south, living in a refugee camp while trying to talk to their friends, all while Kim's colleagues were imprisoned for their Marxist sympathies or forced to flee to North Korea.
In 1953, after the severe strains of the conflict, Kim returned to the Korean capital and began teaching at the Hongik University College of Fine Arts, But after a short stay, he and his wife moved to Paris between 1956 and 1959, where he witnessed an artistic flowering and continued to explore various classic Korean motifs and landscapes, but began to simplify them using thick outlines and fields of vibrant colors.
It was during this period that his characteristic blue palette began to appear, a theme that has defined him with the new generations of art students.
In 1963, the couple moved to the United States a scholarship Rockefeller and was established in NY, a movement daring as Kim was rejecting the safety of life as an established teacher and artist in his homeland to fully engage with his cutting edge experiments.
Source: Whanki Museum
Although he had many conflicts to start his imagination, he was fortunate to be surrounded by a group of young Korean expats who are very articulate, including the video artist from Fluxus Nam-June Paik, the painter Kim Tschang Yeul and the sculptor Han Yong Jin, who helped him find a synthesis between Eastern and Western culture during that decade, exploiting their qualities better than ever.
These years for the painter were of a variety of materials and techniques, including gouache, sand mixed with oil paint, oil on newspaper, collage, and papier-mâché, while he was present in galleries and stays of renown, becoming the first Korean artist to break the $ 10 million mark at auction.
He also came into contact with many of the greats of the painting Modern American via Adolph gottlieb, who introduced him to mark rothko y Barnett newman, which inspired the Korean to begin creating large monochromatic canvases covered with mosaic dots, thereby founding one of the most curious currents in contemporary oriental art: Korean monochrome.
Kim Whanki died on July 25, 1974 in New York. In 1992, the artist's foundation established the Whanki Museum in the city of Seoul, South Korea, where most of his work can be found.