Park Rehyun, Open Stalls, 1956, Ink and color on paper, 267×210cm. MMCA collection
Park Rehyun
* Source: Multilingual Glossary of Korean Art. Korea Arts Management Service
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Paek Yang Painting Association
An art group formed in 1957 to explore new perspectives on Korean paintings and educate future artists. The group was formed by nine artists including Kim Kichang and Park Rehyun of the Husohoe (who were students of Kim Eunho, also known by his pen name I-dang), Kim Youngki, and Chun Kyungja. In January 1961, the group organized a touring exhibition in Southeast Asia, which is noteworthy as the first overseas exhibition held by a Korean private-sector art organization. In this traveling exhibition, the term “hangukwa (Korean painting)” was used for the first time to refer to traditional ink painting, instead of the previously dominant term “Eastern painting.”
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Eastern painting
Eastern painting (dongyanghwa) refers to the overall body of works created using traditional East Asian materials and methods, in contrast to Western painting. In Korea, Byeon Yeongro’s essay “On Eastern Painting” published in Dong-A Ilbo on 7th, July, 1920 was the first use of the term. The term then began to be used in Japan first to distinguish Oriental style paintings from Western ones. Until the late Joseon era, both calligraphy and painting were categorized under the term seohwa, but during the Japanese occupation of Korea in 1922, the first Joseon Art Exhibition [Joseon misul jeollamhoe] divided the painting section into Western and Eastern styles. Thereafter, the term Eastern-style painting entered official use in the country. After independence, the National Art Exhibition (Gukjeon) continued to use the term “Eastern painting,” but since 1970, numerous arguments were made to replace it with "Korean painting," because the term was imposed unilaterally during the Japanese colonial era.
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Kim Kichang
Kim Kichang (1913-2001, pen name Unpo or Unbo) studied Eastern painting at Kim Eunho’s art studio Nakcheongheon. After his debut in the tenth Joseon Art Exhibition [Joseon misul jeollamhoe] in 1931, he won special selections from 1937 to 1940, and became a renowned painter. He was appointed as the first president of Paek Yang Painting Association and became a professor at Hongik University and Soodo Women's Teachers College. He was awarded the Order of Civil Merit, Peony Medal in 1981 and the Korean Art Academy Award in 1983. After he passed away in 2001, he was awarded a posthumous Geumgwan Order of Culture Merit award. Although Kim initially focused on colorful figure paintings, following in the legacy of his mentor Kim Eunho, in his later career he collaborated with his wife Park Rehyun to modernize Korean painting by adopting cubism and abstraction. He reinterpreted traditional folk paintings in his representative works, such as Blue-green Landscape Painting series started in the 1970s and his Fool’s Landscape Painting in the 1980s and was inspired by portraits of historical figures. He contributed to the development of Korean modern art by working in an expanded formal territory from figuration to abstraction and addressing subject matter from folk painting, to figure and landscape painting.
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Contemporary Korean Painting (1958)
A Korean art exhibition held from February 25 to March 22, 1958 at the World House Galleries in New York. The exhibition was considered the first exhibition after the Korean war to introduce the trends within Korean art to the international community. Ellen D. Psatty, an associate professor and art historian at Georgia University who organized the exhibition, visited Korea in August 1957 and contacted the Daehan Art Association and Korean Fine Arts Association and selected about 100 works of art. Of these, she chose 62 to be featured the exhibition. Of the exhibits, only Kim Kichang’s Warhorse sold at 2,000 dollars, and the exhibition failed to achieve much attention in the United States.
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Kim Youngki
Kim Youngki (1911-2003, pen name Cheonggang), the son of Kim Kyujin (pen name Haegang), learned calligraphy and painting at an early age, traveled to Beijing, China, and studied under Qi Baishi, the master of modern Chinese painting. He employed various painting styles ranging from bird-and-flower painting and the Four Gentlemen painting in the literati style influenced by his father and Qi Baishi to landscape and flowering plant painting in the polychrome style through the impact of Japanese painting. After Korea’s independence, Kim led the formation of Dangu Art Academy [Dangu misulwon] and sought Eastern painting and departed from Japanese painting by producing landscape paintings in the style of light colors. During the Korean War, he stayed in Gyeongju and studied the history and culture of the Silla Kingdom (CE676–935) while creating abstract paintings on the theme of Silla historical artifacts to search for the modernization of Eastern painting. In 1957, he founded the Paek Yang Painting Association along with Kim Kichang, Park Rehyun, Kim Junghyun, and others. He also contributed to overseas exchanges of Korean art by holding traveling exhibitions in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Japan. In the 1960s, he developed “literalized art,” a form of abstracted calligraphy, under the influence of Art Informel. In the 1980s, he tried a new change with “Navy Blue Landscape,” which gave expression to a scenic spot in Korea, mainly using navy blue. Kim Youngki actively engaged in studying art theory and art criticism and published several books, including Joseon misulsa (History of Korean Art, 1947), Silla munhwawa Gyeongju gojeok (Silla Culture and Gyeongju Historical Remains, 1953), Dongyang misulsa (History of Eastern Art, 1971), and Dongyang misullon (Theory of Eastern Art, 1980). He was the first to advocate for the use of the term “Korean painting” instead of “Eastern painting.” In 1955, he held his solo exhibition entitled Contemporary Korean Paintings by Cheonggang Kim Youngki.
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