Seoul Contemporary Art Festival, Leaflet, 1975, MMCA Art Research Center Collection, MMCA Art Research Center Collection
Seoul Contemporary Art Festival
* Source: MMCA
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Lee Seungjio
Lee Seungjio(1941-1990) is known for his painting series Nucleus that features various cylindrical shapes reminiscent of pipes. In 1962, Lee formed the group Origin Fine Arts Association with fellow young artists to challenge the established art revolving around the National Art Exhibition (Gukjeon) and Art Informel abstract painting. At the Union Exhibition of Korean Young Artists held in 1967, he presented geometric abstract paintings. In subsequent years, he began to produce his distinctively clear and intelligent abstractions of cylindrical shapes in various compositions, including Nucleus 77, which earned the grand prize at the first International Grand Art Exhibition of Dong-A in 1968. Throughout the 1970s, he continued to explore geometric abstraction by actively engaging in avant-garde art organizations like the Korean Avant Garde Association (referred to as AG). He also participated in several exhibitions, such as the first Daegu Contemporary Art Festival (1974), the first Seoul Biennale (1974), the eleventh São Paulo Biennale (1971), and the seventh International Festival of Painting Cagnes-sur-Mer (1975). Meanwhile, Lee performed remarkably at the National Art Exhibitions. In 1968, he won the Minister of Culture and Information Award at the seventeenth National Art Exhibition for his Nucleus G-99, which was praised as “an avant-garde work that would never have been considered for even an honorable mention in the history of the National Art Exhibitions.” He submitted his work to the National Art Exhibition every year until 1981. The picture planes of the Nucleus series began to be gradually dominated by black hues in the late 1970s. By the mid-1980s the size of the canvases became larger. After his trip to the U.S. in 1988, he moved onto new experiments in which cylindrical images were presented on aluminum or wooden panels. Today, Lee Seungjio is recognized as “an artist who pursued a practice of strict geometric abstraction that is rarely seen in Korean painting circles” and maintained “a prominent and refreshing presence in Korean contemporary art, which lacks traditions or experiences of logical practices.”
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National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA)
A national museum established in 1969 that researches, collects, and exhibits modern and contemporary art. As of 2018, there are branches in Gwacheon, Deoksugung, Seoul, and Cheongju. When first established, the National Museum of Modern Art (now MMCA) was located within Gyeongbokgung palace. In 1973, the museum moved to the East Wing of the Deoksugung Seokjojeon building. Then, in 1986, the museum moved to its current location in Gwacheon, to occupy a new building equipped with an outdoor sculpture exhibition space, and has since opened a new chapter in Korean art. The perceived need for a space to focus specifically on Korean contemporary art led to the establishment of further site, the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Deoksugung in 1998. In November 2013, a further demand for contemporary art exhibitions led to the establishment of another Seoul branch being created in the Defense Security Command building in Sogyeok-dong, Jongno-gu, which has since its inception engaged in multifaceted exhibitions of both domestic and overseas contemporary art. Also, as a further component of the MMCA complex, a disused tobacco factory in Cheongju was remodeled to provide a home to the National Art Storage Center.
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Park Seo-Bo
Park Seo-Bo(1931-2023, real name Park Jaehong) belongs to the first generation of artists who received art education in Korea after Korea’s liberation from Japan. He was a leading figure in Art Informel and Dansaekhwa. He was born in Yecheon, Gyeongsangbuk-do Province. He majored in Western painting in the College of Fine arts at Hongik University and graduated in 1955. He served as a professor at Hongik University and the board president of the Korean Fine Arts Association (Hanguk misul hyeophoe). Park made his debut as a painter in 1956 through the Four Artists Exhibition that declared resistance to the National Art Exhibition and the established generation. After presenting abstract expressionist work completely different from the established art at the third Hyundae Fine Artists Association exhibition in 1958, he led the Art Informel movement until the mid-1960s. In the 1970s, he headed large-scale special exhibitions, including Independants, the Seoul Contemporary Art Festival, Ecole de Séoul, and Korea: Facet of Contemporary Art. He also played a key role in establishing “Dansaekhwa” as a style of Korean painting in the 1970s. His oeuvre can be divided into three periods. The first period (late 1950s–mid 1960s) is referred to as the Art Informel period, during which Park depicted the post-war situation with distorted and deconstructed human forms, dark colors, and rough matière, particularly in the Primordials series. During the second period (late 1960s–early 1970s), he focused on the modernization of tradition, presenting optical and geometric abstraction with five colors representing the five cardinal directions as the dominant compositional element under the thesis of hereditarus. During the third period (1970s–2023), which is known as the period of monochrome painting, he presented the Ecriture series, in which performance was fundamental to his creation. The Ecriture series can be divided into two periods: before and after year 1982. In the former period, Park repeatedly applied milky oil paint to a canvas and before it dried, drew lines with a pencil or a tool with a sharp tip, thus leaving traces of this act on the canvas. In the latter period, he used water-based paints instead of oil-based paints in an effort to more directly capture his emotions with bright hues inspired by the colors of nature. Until his death, he sought to build the identity of Korean art through various methodologies within a single thesis of ecriture and elevated Dansaekhwa to an international level.
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