{"history":[],"article":{"id":"95c9fdfb-de13-41d6-88d8-4311604f657a","title":"Whanki Kim","slug":"whanki-kim","content":":::summary\n![Whanki Kim](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9b/Portrait///of///Kim///Hwangi-Lim///Eungsik-1961.jpg)\n**Name:** Whanki Kim \n**Birth Date:** April 3, 1913 \n**Birth Place:** [Zenranan-dō](https://bliptext.com/articles/zenranan-d), [Korea, Empire of Japan](https://bliptext.com/articles/korea-under-japanese-rule) \n**Nationality:** [Korean](https://bliptext.com/articles/koreans) \n**Field:** Painting \n**Movement:** [Abstract art](https://bliptext.com/articles/abstract-art) \n**Death Date:** July 25, 1974 \n**Death Place:** [New York City](https://bliptext.com/articles/new-york-city), U.S. \n:::\n\n# \n**Kim Whanki** (April 3, 1913 – July 25, 1974) was a Korean painter and pioneering [abstract artist](https://bliptext.com/articles/abstract-art).\nKim lived and worked in a number of cities and countries during his lifetime, including [Tokyo](https://bliptext.com/articles/tokyo), Japan; [Seoul](https://bliptext.com/articles/seoul) and [Busan](https://bliptext.com/articles/busan), Korea; [Paris](https://bliptext.com/articles/paris), France; and [New York City](https://bliptext.com/articles/new-york-city), USA, where he died.\nKim belongs to the first generation of Korean Abstract artists, mixing oriental concepts and ideals with abstraction.\nWith refined and moderated formative expression based on Korean Lyricism, he created his characteristic art world.\nHis artworks largely dealt with diverse [hues](https://bliptext.com/articles/hue) and patterns.\nKim's early works were semi-abstract paintings which allowed viewers to see certain forms, but his later works were more deeply absorbed abstract paintings, filled with lines and spaces.\nThe artist's partner Hyang-an Kim established the Whanki Foundation in 1978 and opened the [Whanki Museum](https://bliptext.com/articles/whanki-museum) in 1992.\nThe Museum, located in [Seoul](https://bliptext.com/articles/seoul), was built by Korean American architect [Kyu Sung Woo](https://bliptext.com/articles/kyu-sung-woo).\nA pioneer of abstract painting and the godfather of the Dansaekhwa movement, Whanki Kim established his place in Korean history and art at an early age.\nWhanki Kim was an artist whose profound impact on the history of Korean art was seen in the first wave of abstract art.\nHis nomadic lifestyle led him to many different places, like Japan, France, and the U.S., which differentiated his artwork from other artists, who created their art based in Korea, due to the lack of opportunities for travel.\nAs a peripatetic artist gaining inspiration from artists of other origins, Whanki Kim's style of abstract art transformed from geometric abstraction to art with traditional Korean motifs to monochrome paintings of dots and lines.\nHe balanced keeping Korean values and beliefs close and incorporating new foreign techniques into his works, which evidently reflect his personal identity and Korea's national identity, impacted by the political and social conditions of the mid-1900s.\n\n# Biography\n\n## Early life\nBorn as the fourth child and only son of wealthy farmer and local landowner Kim Sang-hyeon (김상현), Kim Whanki grew up comfortably in Eupdong-ri, Kijwado, [Anjwa-myeon](https://bliptext.com/articles/anjwa-myeon), [Sinan County](https://bliptext.com/articles/sinan-county-south-jeolla), [Zenranan-dō](https://bliptext.com/articles/zenranan-d), [Korea, Empire of Japan](https://bliptext.com/articles/korea-under-japanese-rule).\nAfter graduating from elementary school, Kim was sent to Seoul to live with his older sister and attend Choongdong Middle School (중동중학교).\nHis family then supported him to study abroad in Tokyo, Japan, where he attended Nishikishiro (錦城) Middle School.\nDuring his five years of study, he learned to play the violin.\nOnce Kim returned home in 1932, his father objected to Kim's wishes to continue his studies and set Kim to marry.\nHis great-nephew is [Choi Seung-hyeon](https://bliptext.com/articles/t-o-p) (b. 1987), an artist, actor, and rapper active under the moniker T.O.P as well as a member of [Big Bang](https://bliptext.com/articles/big-bang-band).\n\n## Tokyo, Japan: 1932–1937\nHaving decided to become an artist against his father's wishes, Kim secretly boarded a vessel bound for [Japan](https://bliptext.com/articles/japan).\nThus in 1933, at the age of 20, Kim enrolled in the 3-year program offered at the Department of Arts at [Nihon University](https://bliptext.com/articles/nihon-university) in Tokyo.\nDuring his second year into the program, Kim joined the Avant-Garde Western Painting Institute (アヴァンギャルド洋画研究所, AbuangyarudoYōga Kenkyūjo), led by Japanese artists who were introducing to Japan [Cubism](https://bliptext.com/articles/cubism), [Futurism](https://bliptext.com/articles/futurism), and [Surrealism](https://bliptext.com/articles/surrealism) based on their experience living and working in Europe.\nAmong his mentors were [Togo Seiji](https://bliptext.com/articles/seiji-t-g) and [Tsuguharu Foujita](https://bliptext.com/articles/tsuguharu-foujita).\nIn 1935, Kim is awarded for his first submission to the prestigious Second Section Association (二科会, Nikakai, 이과전, Igwajŏn), When the Skylarks Sing (종달새 노래할 때), marking his debut as an artist.\nThe painting portrays a woman dressed in [hanbok](https://bliptext.com/articles/hanbok), whose body was rendered in geometric, simplified forms.\nThe basket upon her head is \"transparent\" by showing its content at an impossible angle, revealing Kim's interest apart from realism and towards abstraction.\nHis experiments of incorporating Korean motifs as simplified forms onto the flat picture plane continued, as can be seen in House <집> (1936) and Sauce Jar Terrace <장독대> (1936).\nFeatures often seen in traditional Korean houses, such as wooden gates, paper screen doors, stone walls, stairs, and pottery, are also noted to have added a sense of order and repetition to his paintings, further illustrating his development towards pure abstraction.\nDuring this time Kim participated in activities led by Japan's many artist associations, such as the Hakujitsu Society (白日会), Kofu Society (光風會, Kofukai, 광풍회, Kwangp'unghoe), Free Artists' Association (自由美術家協会, Jiyū Bijutsuka Kyōkai), the Room Nine Society (九室會; Kyushitsukai), and the Hakuban Society (白蛮会, 백만회, Paengmanhoe).\nThe Hakuban was established in 1936 after the closure of the Avant-Garde Western Painting Institute by five of its members, including Kim and Gil Jin-seop (길진섭, 吉鎭燮, 1970–1975).\nHis first solo exhibition took place at the Amagi Gallery in Tokyo in January 1937, only months before returning to Korea.\nEven after he left Tokyo, Kim continued to submit works to the Free Artists' Association in Japan until 1941, including Rondo <론도> (1938).\nAs one of the earliest examples of abstract art in modern Korea, the country's government designated the painting as a Registered Cultural Property (No. 535) in 2013.\nHe even stayed an additional year in Japan as an assistant before returning to Korea in 1937.\nKim's time in Tokyo supported his identity as an Abstract artist.\nIn his university years, he became fascinated by the work of [Henri Matisse](https://bliptext.com/articles/henri-matisse) and [Pablo Picasso](https://bliptext.com/articles/pablo-picasso) His works of 1937 and 1938, such as Rondo, Aria, and White Seagull, are said to show a clear turn toward abstraction with their compositions of pure geometric shapes consisting of repeated rhythmic circular and oblong shapes with squares intersecting or overlapping.\nWhanki Kim's early art experimentation with geometric abstraction drew inspiration from Cubism.\nHis first piece that gained popularity was When Skylarks Sing (1935), which depicts a woman holding a basket on top of her head.\nThe building in the background plays with light and shadows and is one of the many geometric shapes that creates depth in the painting.\nWhanki Kim contrasts the realistic depiction of a traditional Korean woman with an ambiguous background that muddles the exact setting of the painting.\nThere is also a lack of details on the woman's body and face.\nThe artwork reflects Whanki Kim's perception of colonial Korea under Japan's rule, in which Kim as a Korean was relatively distanced from society and had different perspectives than a Korean artist who was attached and impacted by the war.\n# [Untitled | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f5/Kim///Whanki///untitled///1.jpg]\n\n## Seoul: 1938–1951\nAfter returning from his studies in Tokyo, Kim continued to befriend members of the Korean literary circle while gaining more interest in traditional Korean art.\nBy 1940, this exhibition was no longer called the Free Artists Exhibition.\nIt was called the Creative Artists Association, due to increasing military tensions that did not encourage new ideas.\nThe Creative Artists Association made a branch in Korea and held its first exhibition in Seoul, where Kim, fellow Korean artists, as well as a number of Japanese artists exhibited their work.\nKim is said to have submitted six pieces: Island Tale, Still Life, Landscape 1, Landscape 2, Landscape at Atami, and Chamber Music before he left the Association in 1941.\nIn 1944, Kim, who had divorced his first wife, remarried Byun Dong-rim (변동림, 卞東琳, 1916–2004), who was a prodigiously talented writer and widow of poet [Yi Sang](https://bliptext.com/articles/yi-sang).\nDefying the objections from their families, Byun took Kim's [art name](https://bliptext.com/articles/art-name)–Hyang-an–at the time of marriage and lived as such until her death.\nKim changed his art name to Su-hwa (수화, 樹話).\nKorea was liberated from Japanese rule in 1945 and established its independent government by 1948.\nThe same year, Kim, along with artists [Yoo Youngkuk](https://bliptext.com/articles/yoo-youngkuk), Lee Kyusang (이규상, 李揆祥, 1918–1967), created the [New Realism Group](https://bliptext.com/articles/new-realism-group) (신사실파, Shinsashilp'a).\nIts foundational idea was to pursue new types of realistic painting and contribute to the perception of a \"new formation of reality\", which could be exist apart from Japan's direct influence as well as the right-left ideological struggles that dominated the Cold War period of Korea.\nNavigating between figuration and non-figuration, the group has since been considered pioneers of Korean abstract art and one of the most influential artist groups in Korean modern art.\nParticipating members included [Chang Ucchin](https://bliptext.com/articles/chang-ucchin), Paek Youngsu (백영수, 白榮洙, 1922–2018), and [Lee Jung-seob](https://bliptext.com/articles/lee-jung-seob).\nFor the New Realism Group's second exhibition held in 1949, Kim submitted his painting Jar and Flowers <백자와 꽃> (1949).\nThe work, in which a piece of white porcelain is rendered as a round abstract geometric form, is considered to be one of the earliest examples from Kim's oeuvre in which he employs pottery as a significant motif for which he received critical acclaim.\nSince his return to his home country from Japan, Kim had collected and developed a sophisticated taste for Korean antiquities and pottery, especially for a type of white [porcelain](https://bliptext.com/articles/porcelain) ware made in the [Joseon](https://bliptext.com/articles/joseon) period widely known as [moon jars](https://bliptext.com/articles/moon-jar).\nIt is known that he enjoyed displaying and observing [Korean pottery](https://bliptext.com/articles/korean-pottery-and-porcelain) in his home, while depicting the very same objects in his paintings.\nAs a motif in Kim's paintings, Korean pottery was employed as an aesthetic solution for reconciling tradition with modernity.\nBased on his submissions to the [neorealism](https://bliptext.com/articles/neorealism-art) exhibitions, Kim's works during 1942 and 1950 show inspiration from nature and everyday life.\nHis desire to present pure composition and simplified objects is evident in work such as Woods.\n\n## Busan: 1951–1953\nDuring the [Korean War](https://bliptext.com/articles/korean-war), the South Korean government moved to the southern port city of [Busan](https://bliptext.com/articles/busan), along with many refugees.\nWhanki Kim also fled Seoul for safety in the South and entered a refugee camp for three years.\nThese years are said to have been a time of suffering for Whanki Kim—his wife, Hyang-an Kim, recalls his strong rage and habit of drinking, though he did continue to paint.\nSome of the works produced during this time are Refugee Train <피난열차> (1951), Landscape at Chin-hae, Shanty, and Jars and Women <항아리와 여인들> (1951).\nKim's oil painting An Evacuation Train from 1951 is another example of his early abstraction work that reflects his distance from the Korean war.\nThis painting shows a crowd of refugees crammed together in train carriages, creating a claustrophobic environment.\nWhile some artists opted for sorrowful, more realistic depictions of this era using dark tones, Whanki Kim added his own touch of brighter hues of red and blue and simple shapes.\nThere seems to be a contradiction between the urgent, claustrophobic environment of Koreans fleeing the war and the cartoon-like depiction of the refugees.\nThis painting also reflected a time when abstract American art was promoted by the United States Information (USIS).\nWestern art was easily accessible for Korean artists through funded subscriptions to newspapers, magazines, and art journals, which introduced the contemporary trends of abstraction.\nThe true origin of this agenda was the U.S.-led anti-communist campaign against the socialist realist art of North Korea, and the USIS paid South Korean artists, including Whanki Kim, whose work represented an antidote to North Korean cultural practices.\nThis was opposed to forcefully produced art with subjects of Stalin and Kim Il Sung during the time of South Korea under the North Korean rule.\n\n## Seoul: 1953–1956\nWhen Kim Whanki returned to Seoul in 1953, his obsession with jars grew once again and even more than before.\nHe drew jars over and over again in his works including Jar and Poetry, White Jar and Woman, Jar, and Jar and Plum Blossoms. His return to Seoul also allowed him to teach at the College of Fine Arts, [Hongik University](https://bliptext.com/articles/hongik-university), to hold a one-man exhibition at the USIS Gallery, and to be elected a member of the Korean Academy.\n\n## Paris: 1956–1959\nKim's journals show that his departure for [Paris](https://bliptext.com/articles/paris) was something he had been planning for quite a while.\nStarting in 1954, many Korean artists made this trip including Nam Kwan, [Kim Heung-su](https://bliptext.com/articles/kim-heungsou), and Kim Chong-ha.\nParis, the capital of the world of modern art, was the place that would cure them of their sense of inferiority, which had resulted from their negative experiences with Western art in Japan.\nEven though many artists and their works were significantly changed during trips abroad, Kim intentionally retained his artistic style and continued to portray motifs of jars, birds, mountains, deer, and plum blossoms.\nAway in France, Kim came to better understand and appreciate the unique qualities of Korea and Korean art.\nWhanki Kim frequently traveled to new places to adopt new artistic techniques and incorporate them into his work, and his goal throughout his career was to reach this universality of a \"boundaryless integration of Eastern and Western aesthetics\".\nHe was tired of his works being viewed as either an abandonment of Korean values or as a weak imitation of \"authentic\" Western art.\nA symbol of Whanki Kim's struggle to reach this seamless integration of both traditional/modern and Eastern/Western style was the buncheong jar from the Joseon dynasty.\nThe Joseon Dynasty pottery can be characterized as large, white, thick, and misshapen, and has a utilitarian function.\nAn infamous piece is the \"Moon Jar,\" which is a white porcelain vessel that is shaped round, like a moon.\nWhen he traveled to Paris, his paintings underwent intense change, including the color palette primarily becoming blue, and they began to mimic the mottled ceramic surfaces.\nIn the 1950s, Whanki Kim began to incorporate traditional motifs from the Korean landscape, such as a blue moon, mountains, and plum blossoms.\nJar (1958) by Whanki Kim represented the transition from flat, patchy strokes to a building-up of layers.\nThe texture of this piece is evidently thick and mottled, akin to traditional Korean pottery.\nFurther, the jar as a subject has no sense of space as there are no referential objects surrounding it.\nThe scale of the moon is as big as the jar, which creates a \"zoom-in\" effect and adds to the abstraction of the art.\nAdding these Korean motifs to his artwork made Kim more aware of his Korean identity in a time of constant travel.\nVisiting Paris was a transformative experience for Whanki Kim as he was able to experiment with the stained glass effect of Roualt's paintings to replicate the 3D nature and texture of the buncheong jar onto the 2D canvas.\nHe was able to combine the \"Koreanness\" of the Joseon Dynasty jar and elements of the abstract expressionist movement.\n\n## Seoul: 1959–1963\nOn his return to Seoul in 1959 he was almost immediately offered the position of Dean of Faculty at the College of Fine Arts at Hongik University.\nIn 1960, he became President of Hongik Art College.\nHe found himself teaching and performing administrative duties more often than he was concentrating on art.\nHe often felt frustrated during this time because of conflicts with other board members and the lack of connection between reality and what dreams he had for the institutions of art.\n\n## New York: 1963–1974\n1963 was the first year Korea participated in the [São Paulo Biennial](https://bliptext.com/articles/s-o-paulo-biennial), in which Kim participated as the country's commissioner and among the seven featured artists: Young-ju Kim (김영주, 金永周, (1920–1995), [Yoo Youngkuk](https://bliptext.com/articles/yoo-youngkuk), [Kim Ki-chang](https://bliptext.com/articles/kim-ki-chang), [Suh Se-ok](https://bliptext.com/articles/suh-se-ok), Han Yong-jin (한용진, 韓鏞進, 1934–), and Yoo Gang-yeol (유강열, 劉康烈, 1920–1976). Submitting three works–Moonlight in Summer Night <여름 달밤> (1961), Moonlight Night of Island <섬의 달밤> (1959), and Cloud and Moon <운월> (1963)–Kim was awarded an Honorable Mention for painting. Upon seeing the works of at the Biennale, such as the works of American artist [Adolph Gottlieb](https://bliptext.com/articles/adolph-gottlieb) whom was awarded the Grande Prêmio, Kim reported his desire for the \"internationalization\" of Korean art.\nThus in 1963, Kim relocated to New York, a city that was emerging as a new center for modern Art.\nHyang-an Kim joined Kim in New York the following year.\nWith a grant from the Asia Society funded by the foundation of John D. Rockefeller III, they settled in a studio in the Upper West Side of Manhattan.\nThere he finds support from a number of Korean cultural attaché's, Korean American artists [Po Kim](https://bliptext.com/articles/po-kim), John Pai (1937–), and [Nam June Paik](https://bliptext.com/articles/nam-june-paik), as well as American artists [Adolph Gottlieb](https://bliptext.com/articles/adolph-gottlieb) and [Mark Rothko](https://bliptext.com/articles/mark-rothko).\nWhen Whanki Kim arrived in New York, he began to experiment with new materials, like newspaper pages and oil paints.\nHe was curious about how different oil paints reacted with the oil on the newspaper, which created a \"shifting, moving sense of paint laying on top of a surface\" compared to the absorption effect of watercolor paint, which led to his interest in paper-mache.\nA paper sculpture called Daejup (1968) represents the transformation Kim's art underwent to merge the oil paintings on the newspapers with 3D sculptures.\nWhanki Kim took pride in the fact that he conserved \"Koreanness\" into his art as the oil paint on paper mimicked the mottled surface of pottery from Joseon dynasty.\nDaejup is a wide black jar that widens near the top and has symmetrical dots surrounding the lining of the jar.\nThe dots are intentionally disordered to add an organic sense to the work, similar to the jars of the Joseon time period.\nWhat made Whanki Kim so extraordinary was that even while moving to New York and picking up these new techniques of paper-mache, he protected elements of his homeland.\nNew York allowed him to be free of all social obligations and just focus on the creativity of his work.\nHowever, it is important to acknowledge that other Korean artists in his realm did not have the privilege and opportunity to drop all of their responsibilities to pursue art.\nThus, Whanki Kim had an advantage when it came to access to foreign techniques and the ability to explore.\nMost noted from the artist's time in New York is the rise of the series of \"all-over canvas dot paintings\" (점면전화, Chŏmmyŏnjŏnhwa) or simply known as \"dot paintings\".\nBy 1970, Kim began to produce paintings that filled the entire surface of his unprimed canvases with small, irregular dots using oil paint mixed with turpentine.\nAn early, significant example is Where, in What Form, Shall We Meet Again? <어디서 무엇이 되어 다시 만나랴> (1970), titled after a poem of his friend and Korean poet Kim Gwang-Seop (김광섭, 1905–1977).\nWhile the work resulted from years of experimentation with abstraction and the geometrical elements that make up painting–dot, line, and plane–, the subdued palette as well as the watered-down paint produced an effect of blurred ink, evocative of East Asian ink wash painting.\nWith Where, in What Form, Shall We Meet Again?, Kim was awarded the Grand Prize at the first iteration of the Korean Art Grand Award Exhibition.\nDrastically different from Kim's work from Korea that depicted Korean motifs and sentiments, his purely abstract style left a great impression to the Korean art scene.\nKim continued to produce \"dot paintings\" on larger-sized canvases and experimented with different colors, especially with range of blue hues.\nBy 1971, Kim took a turn on its composition by arranging the dots in a circular or curvilinear fashion, such as seen in Universe 05-IV-71 #200 (1971).\nUniverse, which is regarded as one of the most important works of the artist's oeuvre today, was well received in New York at the time.\nThe work was included in Kim's solo show at New York's Poindexter Gallery, where he continued to show annually, until his death in 1974.\nDansaekhwa, also known as the monochrome painting movement, included paintings of gray, brown, beige, and white hues produced in the late 1960s and applied to paintings that manifested a merger between the artist's body and mind by exploring the physicality of the painting materials.\nThis movement stemmed from the desire to reclaim their stolen \"Koreanness\" pride from the war and the need for strong political and social control.\nIt was also a departure from the Japanese-style Nihonga that represented the colonial period of Korea and adopted abstract paintings in Western art scenes during the era of modernization.\nIn Universe (1971), Kim painted repeating rows of circles made of dots that capture the essence of waves pulsating on the shore.\nThe dots \"seem to proliferate like living cells\" and \"represent the flow of powerful solar energy\", which allows the audience to experience synesthesia.\nSince no two dots are the same, the movement of each piece is uneven and causes the eye to lose focus and get lost in the painting.\nWhanki Kim distinguishes himself from other artists with the temporality of his work.\nAmerican paintings tend to have that \"all-at-once\" aspect, while Whanki Kim's work is constantly dynamic and there is an implicit sense of movement at all times.\nNew York was a significant transitional period because the usual motifs, like the bird and moon, were gradually replaced by dots and lines, as seen in this work.\nHis pieces became less figurative and more abstract with linear horizontals and verticals and diagonal arrangements.\nCompared to his earlier works with very bright hues, Universe, along with his later works, were gray-blue or black and encapsulated the \"Whanki Blue\" palette.\nFurther, Kim designed this piece so that the audience could picture the movement of shimmering heavenly bodies mimicked by the dynamic dots.\nIndividuals are stimulated to become \"one\" with the painting.\nThis transition and disappearance of Korean motifs can also speak to Whanki Kim's distance from his Korean identity as he settled in New York and became engrossed in foreign works.\nDuring his career in New York, works depicting cosmic, planetary subjects, sound, echo, and music arose.\nIn the second half of his time in New York, Kim spent much time on collages, [papier-mâché](https://bliptext.com/articles/papier-m-ch) works, and oil-on-newspaper paintings.\nIt was during this time that Kim began to utilize dots in his works, sometimes even covering whole canvases with just dots, such as in Where and in What Form Are We to Meet Again? (1970) and 05-IV-71 #200 (Universe) (1971).\nThe latter was sold for HK$102m (US$13.03m), surpassing its estimate of HK$48m-62m, and became the most expensive Korean work of art.\n\n# Exhibitions\nSelected Posthumous Exhibitions\n\n# Further reading and external links","current_revision":null,"created_by":"kACnuQmH5k9Nr5VNVEpVeg7XpvUmMctD","created_at":"2025-01-26T10:19:28.545Z","updated_at":"2025-01-26T10:19:28.545Z","search_vector":"'kim':2 'whanki':1","search_content":" \n \n**Name:** Whanki Kim \n**Birth Date:** April 3, 1913 \n**Birth Place:** [Zenranan-dō](https://bliptext.com/articles/zenranan-d), [Korea, Empire of Japan](https://bliptext.com/articles/korea-under-japanese-rule) \n**Nationality:** [Korean](https://bliptext.com/articles/koreans) \n**Field:** Painting \n**Movement:** [Abstract art](https://bliptext.com/articles/abstract-art) \n**Death Date:** July 25, 1974 \n**Death Place:** [New York City](https://bliptext.com/articles/new-york-city), U.S. \n \n\n# \n**Kim Whanki** (April 3, 1913 – July 25, 1974) was a Korean painter and pioneering [abstract artist](https://bliptext.com/articles/abstract-art).\nKim lived and worked in a number of cities and countries during his lifetime, including [Tokyo](https://bliptext.com/articles/tokyo), Japan; [Seoul](https://bliptext.com/articles/seoul) and [Busan](https://bliptext.com/articles/busan), Korea; [Paris](https://bliptext.com/articles/paris), France; and [New York City](https://bliptext.com/articles/new-york-city), USA, where he died.\nKim belongs to the first generation of Korean Abstract artists, mixing oriental concepts and ideals with abstraction.\nWith refined and moderated formative expression based on Korean Lyricism, he created his characteristic art world.\nHis artworks largely dealt with diverse [hues](https://bliptext.com/articles/hue) and patterns.\nKim's early works were semi-abstract paintings which allowed viewers to see certain forms, but his later works were more deeply absorbed abstract paintings, filled with lines and spaces.\nThe artist's partner Hyang-an Kim established the Whanki Foundation in 1978 and opened the [Whanki Museum](https://bliptext.com/articles/whanki-museum) in 1992.\nThe Museum, located in [Seoul](https://bliptext.com/articles/seoul), was built by Korean American architect [Kyu Sung Woo](https://bliptext.com/articles/kyu-sung-woo).\nA pioneer of abstract painting and the godfather of the Dansaekhwa movement, Whanki Kim established his place in Korean history and art at an early age.\nWhanki Kim was an artist whose profound impact on the history of Korean art was seen in the first wave of abstract art.\nHis nomadic lifestyle led him to many different places, like Japan, France, and the U.S., which differentiated his artwork from other artists, who created their art based in Korea, due to the lack of opportunities for travel.\nAs a peripatetic artist gaining inspiration from artists of other origins, Whanki Kim's style of abstract art transformed from geometric abstraction to art with traditional Korean motifs to monochrome paintings of dots and lines.\nHe balanced keeping Korean values and beliefs close and incorporating new foreign techniques into his works, which evidently reflect his personal identity and Korea's national identity, impacted by the political and social conditions of the mid-1900s.\n\n# Biography\n\n## Early life\nBorn as the fourth child and only son of wealthy farmer and local landowner Kim Sang-hyeon (김상현), Kim Whanki grew up comfortably in Eupdong-ri, Kijwado, [Anjwa-myeon](https://bliptext.com/articles/anjwa-myeon), [Sinan County](https://bliptext.com/articles/sinan-county-south-jeolla), [Zenranan-dō](https://bliptext.com/articles/zenranan-d), [Korea, Empire of Japan](https://bliptext.com/articles/korea-under-japanese-rule).\nAfter graduating from elementary school, Kim was sent to Seoul to live with his older sister and attend Choongdong Middle School (중동중학교).\nHis family then supported him to study abroad in Tokyo, Japan, where he attended Nishikishiro (錦城) Middle School.\nDuring his five years of study, he learned to play the violin.\nOnce Kim returned home in 1932, his father objected to Kim's wishes to continue his studies and set Kim to marry.\nHis great-nephew is [Choi Seung-hyeon](https://bliptext.com/articles/t-o-p) (b. 1987), an artist, actor, and rapper active under the moniker T.O.P as well as a member of [Big Bang](https://bliptext.com/articles/big-bang-band).\n\n## Tokyo, Japan: 1932–1937\nHaving decided to become an artist against his father's wishes, Kim secretly boarded a vessel bound for [Japan](https://bliptext.com/articles/japan).\nThus in 1933, at the age of 20, Kim enrolled in the 3-year program offered at the Department of Arts at [Nihon University](https://bliptext.com/articles/nihon-university) in Tokyo.\nDuring his second year into the program, Kim joined the Avant-Garde Western Painting Institute (アヴァンギャルド洋画研究所, AbuangyarudoYōga Kenkyūjo), led by Japanese artists who were introducing to Japan [Cubism](https://bliptext.com/articles/cubism), [Futurism](https://bliptext.com/articles/futurism), and [Surrealism](https://bliptext.com/articles/surrealism) based on their experience living and working in Europe.\nAmong his mentors were [Togo Seiji](https://bliptext.com/articles/seiji-t-g) and [Tsuguharu Foujita](https://bliptext.com/articles/tsuguharu-foujita).\nIn 1935, Kim is awarded for his first submission to the prestigious Second Section Association (二科会, Nikakai, 이과전, Igwajŏn), When the Skylarks Sing (종달새 노래할 때), marking his debut as an artist.\nThe painting portrays a woman dressed in [hanbok](https://bliptext.com/articles/hanbok), whose body was rendered in geometric, simplified forms.\nThe basket upon her head is \"transparent\" by showing its content at an impossible angle, revealing Kim's interest apart from realism and towards abstraction.\nHis experiments of incorporating Korean motifs as simplified forms onto the flat picture plane continued, as can be seen in House (1936) and Sauce Jar Terrace (1936).\nFeatures often seen in traditional Korean houses, such as wooden gates, paper screen doors, stone walls, stairs, and pottery, are also noted to have added a sense of order and repetition to his paintings, further illustrating his development towards pure abstraction.\nDuring this time Kim participated in activities led by Japan's many artist associations, such as the Hakujitsu Society (白日会), Kofu Society (光風會, Kofukai, 광풍회, Kwangp'unghoe), Free Artists' Association (自由美術家協会, Jiyū Bijutsuka Kyōkai), the Room Nine Society (九室會; Kyushitsukai), and the Hakuban Society (白蛮会, 백만회, Paengmanhoe).\nThe Hakuban was established in 1936 after the closure of the Avant-Garde Western Painting Institute by five of its members, including Kim and Gil Jin-seop (길진섭, 吉鎭燮, 1970–1975).\nHis first solo exhibition took place at the Amagi Gallery in Tokyo in January 1937, only months before returning to Korea.\nEven after he left Tokyo, Kim continued to submit works to the Free Artists' Association in Japan until 1941, including Rondo (1938).\nAs one of the earliest examples of abstract art in modern Korea, the country's government designated the painting as a Registered Cultural Property (No. 535) in 2013.\nHe even stayed an additional year in Japan as an assistant before returning to Korea in 1937.\nKim's time in Tokyo supported his identity as an Abstract artist.\nIn his university years, he became fascinated by the work of [Henri Matisse](https://bliptext.com/articles/henri-matisse) and [Pablo Picasso](https://bliptext.com/articles/pablo-picasso) His works of 1937 and 1938, such as Rondo, Aria, and White Seagull, are said to show a clear turn toward abstraction with their compositions of pure geometric shapes consisting of repeated rhythmic circular and oblong shapes with squares intersecting or overlapping.\nWhanki Kim's early art experimentation with geometric abstraction drew inspiration from Cubism.\nHis first piece that gained popularity was When Skylarks Sing (1935), which depicts a woman holding a basket on top of her head.\nThe building in the background plays with light and shadows and is one of the many geometric shapes that creates depth in the painting.\nWhanki Kim contrasts the realistic depiction of a traditional Korean woman with an ambiguous background that muddles the exact setting of the painting.\nThere is also a lack of details on the woman's body and face.\nThe artwork reflects Whanki Kim's perception of colonial Korea under Japan's rule, in which Kim as a Korean was relatively distanced from society and had different perspectives than a Korean artist who was attached and impacted by the war.\n# [Untitled | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f5/Kim///Whanki///untitled///1.jpg]\n\n## Seoul: 1938–1951\nAfter returning from his studies in Tokyo, Kim continued to befriend members of the Korean literary circle while gaining more interest in traditional Korean art.\nBy 1940, this exhibition was no longer called the Free Artists Exhibition.\nIt was called the Creative Artists Association, due to increasing military tensions that did not encourage new ideas.\nThe Creative Artists Association made a branch in Korea and held its first exhibition in Seoul, where Kim, fellow Korean artists, as well as a number of Japanese artists exhibited their work.\nKim is said to have submitted six pieces: Island Tale, Still Life, Landscape 1, Landscape 2, Landscape at Atami, and Chamber Music before he left the Association in 1941.\nIn 1944, Kim, who had divorced his first wife, remarried Byun Dong-rim (변동림, 卞東琳, 1916–2004), who was a prodigiously talented writer and widow of poet [Yi Sang](https://bliptext.com/articles/yi-sang).\nDefying the objections from their families, Byun took Kim's [art name](https://bliptext.com/articles/art-name)–Hyang-an–at the time of marriage and lived as such until her death.\nKim changed his art name to Su-hwa (수화, 樹話).\nKorea was liberated from Japanese rule in 1945 and established its independent government by 1948.\nThe same year, Kim, along with artists [Yoo Youngkuk](https://bliptext.com/articles/yoo-youngkuk), Lee Kyusang (이규상, 李揆祥, 1918–1967), created the [New Realism Group](https://bliptext.com/articles/new-realism-group) (신사실파, Shinsashilp'a).\nIts foundational idea was to pursue new types of realistic painting and contribute to the perception of a \"new formation of reality\", which could be exist apart from Japan's direct influence as well as the right-left ideological struggles that dominated the Cold War period of Korea.\nNavigating between figuration and non-figuration, the group has since been considered pioneers of Korean abstract art and one of the most influential artist groups in Korean modern art.\nParticipating members included [Chang Ucchin](https://bliptext.com/articles/chang-ucchin), Paek Youngsu (백영수, 白榮洙, 1922–2018), and [Lee Jung-seob](https://bliptext.com/articles/lee-jung-seob).\nFor the New Realism Group's second exhibition held in 1949, Kim submitted his painting Jar and Flowers (1949).\nThe work, in which a piece of white porcelain is rendered as a round abstract geometric form, is considered to be one of the earliest examples from Kim's oeuvre in which he employs pottery as a significant motif for which he received critical acclaim.\nSince his return to his home country from Japan, Kim had collected and developed a sophisticated taste for Korean antiquities and pottery, especially for a type of white [porcelain](https://bliptext.com/articles/porcelain) ware made in the [Joseon](https://bliptext.com/articles/joseon) period widely known as [moon jars](https://bliptext.com/articles/moon-jar).\nIt is known that he enjoyed displaying and observing [Korean pottery](https://bliptext.com/articles/korean-pottery-and-porcelain) in his home, while depicting the very same objects in his paintings.\nAs a motif in Kim's paintings, Korean pottery was employed as an aesthetic solution for reconciling tradition with modernity.\nBased on his submissions to the [neorealism](https://bliptext.com/articles/neorealism-art) exhibitions, Kim's works during 1942 and 1950 show inspiration from nature and everyday life.\nHis desire to present pure composition and simplified objects is evident in work such as Woods.\n\n## Busan: 1951–1953\nDuring the [Korean War](https://bliptext.com/articles/korean-war), the South Korean government moved to the southern port city of [Busan](https://bliptext.com/articles/busan), along with many refugees.\nWhanki Kim also fled Seoul for safety in the South and entered a refugee camp for three years.\nThese years are said to have been a time of suffering for Whanki Kim—his wife, Hyang-an Kim, recalls his strong rage and habit of drinking, though he did continue to paint.\nSome of the works produced during this time are Refugee Train (1951), Landscape at Chin-hae, Shanty, and Jars and Women (1951).\nKim's oil painting An Evacuation Train from 1951 is another example of his early abstraction work that reflects his distance from the Korean war.\nThis painting shows a crowd of refugees crammed together in train carriages, creating a claustrophobic environment.\nWhile some artists opted for sorrowful, more realistic depictions of this era using dark tones, Whanki Kim added his own touch of brighter hues of red and blue and simple shapes.\nThere seems to be a contradiction between the urgent, claustrophobic environment of Koreans fleeing the war and the cartoon-like depiction of the refugees.\nThis painting also reflected a time when abstract American art was promoted by the United States Information (USIS).\nWestern art was easily accessible for Korean artists through funded subscriptions to newspapers, magazines, and art journals, which introduced the contemporary trends of abstraction.\nThe true origin of this agenda was the U.S.-led anti-communist campaign against the socialist realist art of North Korea, and the USIS paid South Korean artists, including Whanki Kim, whose work represented an antidote to North Korean cultural practices.\nThis was opposed to forcefully produced art with subjects of Stalin and Kim Il Sung during the time of South Korea under the North Korean rule.\n\n## Seoul: 1953–1956\nWhen Kim Whanki returned to Seoul in 1953, his obsession with jars grew once again and even more than before.\nHe drew jars over and over again in his works including Jar and Poetry, White Jar and Woman, Jar, and Jar and Plum Blossoms. His return to Seoul also allowed him to teach at the College of Fine Arts, [Hongik University](https://bliptext.com/articles/hongik-university), to hold a one-man exhibition at the USIS Gallery, and to be elected a member of the Korean Academy.\n\n## Paris: 1956–1959\nKim's journals show that his departure for [Paris](https://bliptext.com/articles/paris) was something he had been planning for quite a while.\nStarting in 1954, many Korean artists made this trip including Nam Kwan, [Kim Heung-su](https://bliptext.com/articles/kim-heungsou), and Kim Chong-ha.\nParis, the capital of the world of modern art, was the place that would cure them of their sense of inferiority, which had resulted from their negative experiences with Western art in Japan.\nEven though many artists and their works were significantly changed during trips abroad, Kim intentionally retained his artistic style and continued to portray motifs of jars, birds, mountains, deer, and plum blossoms.\nAway in France, Kim came to better understand and appreciate the unique qualities of Korea and Korean art.\nWhanki Kim frequently traveled to new places to adopt new artistic techniques and incorporate them into his work, and his goal throughout his career was to reach this universality of a \"boundaryless integration of Eastern and Western aesthetics\".\nHe was tired of his works being viewed as either an abandonment of Korean values or as a weak imitation of \"authentic\" Western art.\nA symbol of Whanki Kim's struggle to reach this seamless integration of both traditional/modern and Eastern/Western style was the buncheong jar from the Joseon dynasty.\nThe Joseon Dynasty pottery can be characterized as large, white, thick, and misshapen, and has a utilitarian function.\nAn infamous piece is the \"Moon Jar,\" which is a white porcelain vessel that is shaped round, like a moon.\nWhen he traveled to Paris, his paintings underwent intense change, including the color palette primarily becoming blue, and they began to mimic the mottled ceramic surfaces.\nIn the 1950s, Whanki Kim began to incorporate traditional motifs from the Korean landscape, such as a blue moon, mountains, and plum blossoms.\nJar (1958) by Whanki Kim represented the transition from flat, patchy strokes to a building-up of layers.\nThe texture of this piece is evidently thick and mottled, akin to traditional Korean pottery.\nFurther, the jar as a subject has no sense of space as there are no referential objects surrounding it.\nThe scale of the moon is as big as the jar, which creates a \"zoom-in\" effect and adds to the abstraction of the art.\nAdding these Korean motifs to his artwork made Kim more aware of his Korean identity in a time of constant travel.\nVisiting Paris was a transformative experience for Whanki Kim as he was able to experiment with the stained glass effect of Roualt's paintings to replicate the 3D nature and texture of the buncheong jar onto the 2D canvas.\nHe was able to combine the \"Koreanness\" of the Joseon Dynasty jar and elements of the abstract expressionist movement.\n\n## Seoul: 1959–1963\nOn his return to Seoul in 1959 he was almost immediately offered the position of Dean of Faculty at the College of Fine Arts at Hongik University.\nIn 1960, he became President of Hongik Art College.\nHe found himself teaching and performing administrative duties more often than he was concentrating on art.\nHe often felt frustrated during this time because of conflicts with other board members and the lack of connection between reality and what dreams he had for the institutions of art.\n\n## New York: 1963–1974\n1963 was the first year Korea participated in the [São Paulo Biennial](https://bliptext.com/articles/s-o-paulo-biennial), in which Kim participated as the country's commissioner and among the seven featured artists: Young-ju Kim (김영주, 金永周, (1920–1995), [Yoo Youngkuk](https://bliptext.com/articles/yoo-youngkuk), [Kim Ki-chang](https://bliptext.com/articles/kim-ki-chang), [Suh Se-ok](https://bliptext.com/articles/suh-se-ok), Han Yong-jin (한용진, 韓鏞進, 1934–), and Yoo Gang-yeol (유강열, 劉康烈, 1920–1976). Submitting three works–Moonlight in Summer Night (1961), Moonlight Night of Island (1959), and Cloud and Moon (1963)–Kim was awarded an Honorable Mention for painting. Upon seeing the works of at the Biennale, such as the works of American artist [Adolph Gottlieb](https://bliptext.com/articles/adolph-gottlieb) whom was awarded the Grande Prêmio, Kim reported his desire for the \"internationalization\" of Korean art.\nThus in 1963, Kim relocated to New York, a city that was emerging as a new center for modern Art.\nHyang-an Kim joined Kim in New York the following year.\nWith a grant from the Asia Society funded by the foundation of John D. Rockefeller III, they settled in a studio in the Upper West Side of Manhattan.\nThere he finds support from a number of Korean cultural attaché's, Korean American artists [Po Kim](https://bliptext.com/articles/po-kim), John Pai (1937–), and [Nam June Paik](https://bliptext.com/articles/nam-june-paik), as well as American artists [Adolph Gottlieb](https://bliptext.com/articles/adolph-gottlieb) and [Mark Rothko](https://bliptext.com/articles/mark-rothko).\nWhen Whanki Kim arrived in New York, he began to experiment with new materials, like newspaper pages and oil paints.\nHe was curious about how different oil paints reacted with the oil on the newspaper, which created a \"shifting, moving sense of paint laying on top of a surface\" compared to the absorption effect of watercolor paint, which led to his interest in paper-mache.\nA paper sculpture called Daejup (1968) represents the transformation Kim's art underwent to merge the oil paintings on the newspapers with 3D sculptures.\nWhanki Kim took pride in the fact that he conserved \"Koreanness\" into his art as the oil paint on paper mimicked the mottled surface of pottery from Joseon dynasty.\nDaejup is a wide black jar that widens near the top and has symmetrical dots surrounding the lining of the jar.\nThe dots are intentionally disordered to add an organic sense to the work, similar to the jars of the Joseon time period.\nWhat made Whanki Kim so extraordinary was that even while moving to New York and picking up these new techniques of paper-mache, he protected elements of his homeland.\nNew York allowed him to be free of all social obligations and just focus on the creativity of his work.\nHowever, it is important to acknowledge that other Korean artists in his realm did not have the privilege and opportunity to drop all of their responsibilities to pursue art.\nThus, Whanki Kim had an advantage when it came to access to foreign techniques and the ability to explore.\nMost noted from the artist's time in New York is the rise of the series of \"all-over canvas dot paintings\" (점면전화, Chŏmmyŏnjŏnhwa) or simply known as \"dot paintings\".\nBy 1970, Kim began to produce paintings that filled the entire surface of his unprimed canvases with small, irregular dots using oil paint mixed with turpentine.\nAn early, significant example is Where, in What Form, Shall We Meet Again? (1970), titled after a poem of his friend and Korean poet Kim Gwang-Seop (김광섭, 1905–1977).\nWhile the work resulted from years of experimentation with abstraction and the geometrical elements that make up painting–dot, line, and plane–, the subdued palette as well as the watered-down paint produced an effect of blurred ink, evocative of East Asian ink wash painting.\nWith Where, in What Form, Shall We Meet Again?, Kim was awarded the Grand Prize at the first iteration of the Korean Art Grand Award Exhibition.\nDrastically different from Kim's work from Korea that depicted Korean motifs and sentiments, his purely abstract style left a great impression to the Korean art scene.\nKim continued to produce \"dot paintings\" on larger-sized canvases and experimented with different colors, especially with range of blue hues.\nBy 1971, Kim took a turn on its composition by arranging the dots in a circular or curvilinear fashion, such as seen in Universe 05-IV-71 #200 (1971).\nUniverse, which is regarded as one of the most important works of the artist's oeuvre today, was well received in New York at the time.\nThe work was included in Kim's solo show at New York's Poindexter Gallery, where he continued to show annually, until his death in 1974.\nDansaekhwa, also known as the monochrome painting movement, included paintings of gray, brown, beige, and white hues produced in the late 1960s and applied to paintings that manifested a merger between the artist's body and mind by exploring the physicality of the painting materials.\nThis movement stemmed from the desire to reclaim their stolen \"Koreanness\" pride from the war and the need for strong political and social control.\nIt was also a departure from the Japanese-style Nihonga that represented the colonial period of Korea and adopted abstract paintings in Western art scenes during the era of modernization.\nIn Universe (1971), Kim painted repeating rows of circles made of dots that capture the essence of waves pulsating on the shore.\nThe dots \"seem to proliferate like living cells\" and \"represent the flow of powerful solar energy\", which allows the audience to experience synesthesia.\nSince no two dots are the same, the movement of each piece is uneven and causes the eye to lose focus and get lost in the painting.\nWhanki Kim distinguishes himself from other artists with the temporality of his work.\nAmerican paintings tend to have that \"all-at-once\" aspect, while Whanki Kim's work is constantly dynamic and there is an implicit sense of movement at all times.\nNew York was a significant transitional period because the usual motifs, like the bird and moon, were gradually replaced by dots and lines, as seen in this work.\nHis pieces became less figurative and more abstract with linear horizontals and verticals and diagonal arrangements.\nCompared to his earlier works with very bright hues, Universe, along with his later works, were gray-blue or black and encapsulated the \"Whanki Blue\" palette.\nFurther, Kim designed this piece so that the audience could picture the movement of shimmering heavenly bodies mimicked by the dynamic dots.\nIndividuals are stimulated to become \"one\" with the painting.\nThis transition and disappearance of Korean motifs can also speak to Whanki Kim's distance from his Korean identity as he settled in New York and became engrossed in foreign works.\nDuring his career in New York, works depicting cosmic, planetary subjects, sound, echo, and music arose.\nIn the second half of his time in New York, Kim spent much time on collages, [papier-mâché](https://bliptext.com/articles/papier-m-ch) works, and oil-on-newspaper paintings.\nIt was during this time that Kim began to utilize dots in his works, sometimes even covering whole canvases with just dots, such as in Where and in What Form Are We to Meet Again? (1970) and 05-IV-71 #200 (Universe) (1971).\nThe latter was sold for HK$102m (US$13.03m), surpassing its estimate of HK$48m-62m, and became the most expensive Korean work of art.\n\n# Exhibitions\nSelected Posthumous Exhibitions\n\n# Further reading and external links","revisionCount":0},"hasMore":false,"nextCursor":null}

History