Shining on your days

KIM Whanki

1913–1974, Born in Sinan, Korea

Kim Whanki is called a pioneer of Korean abstract painting. The total period of time he stayed in his hometown, Sinan, is about 20 years all together, and considering his life of 60 years or so, he spent a significant amount of time in his hometown. A longing for the hometown was his artistic source, and it extended further to a longing for his homeland while he was staying abroad. The Korean lyricism appears in the sky, sea, and moonlight of his hometown is later expressed as a poetic spirit approaching to the essence of art through his abstract dot paintings of immeasurable depth.

During the Japanese colonial period in the 1930s, Kim was introduced to Western painting while studying in Tokyo, Japan. In Tokyo, Kim experimented with new trends of Western art, such as Cubism, Futurism, and Abstract art. After returning to Korea, he served as a professor at Seoul National University and Hongik University. In the 1940s, he continued to work with Korean still objects such as moon jars. During the Paris-Seoul period (1956–1962), his paintings were steadily refined, and motifs inspired by the tradition such as the Korean mountain streams, apricot blossom branches, and round moons were expressed symbolically and decoratively through matière. During the New York period (1963–1974) where he stayed until he passed away, the figurative forms gradually disappears, and then he moves forward to all-over abstract dot paintings, which filled the canvases with dots while using basic formative elements: dots, lines, and planes. “My painting is a painting of a people from the Eastern culture, and it has to be a painting of a Korean to the backbone. (…) Art seems to be a song of strong people. (…)“ The abstract dot painting, which is the peak of his artistic world, shows Eastern aesthetics by making dots with Western art material such as oil colors on cotton and using ink-and-wash effect like spreading on Korean paper. Like that, Kim’s works are rooted in his identity as a Korean.

The moon, jars, and birds rose in the sea, became clearer as they got farther away from their homeland, and the blue sea and sky of Sinan, their hometown, finally bloomed into the endless blue abyss of the universe. The world of his artwork that reaches to the immeasurable depth, represents the unique Korean sentiment and delivers its echo as the poetry and song of the people.