Whanki Kim
Kim Whanki was a Korean painter and pioneering abstract artist. Kim lived and worked in a number of cities and countries during his lifetime, including Tokyo, Japan; Seoul and Busan, Korea; Paris, France; and New York City, USA, where he died.
Kim belongs to the first generation of Korean Abstract artists, mixing oriental concepts and ideals with abstraction. With refined and moderated formative expression based on Korean Lyricism, he created his characteristic art world. His artworks largely dealt with diverse hues and patterns. Kim'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.
The artist's partner Hyang-an Kim established the Whanki Foundation in 1978 and opened the Whanki Museum in 1992. The Museum, located in Seoul, was built by Korean American architect Kyu Sung Woo.
A 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. Whanki Kim was an artist whose profound impact on the history of Korean art was seen in the first wave of abstract art. His 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. As 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. He 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.
Biography
Early life
Born as the fourth child and only son of wealthy farmer and local landowner Kim Sang-hyeon, Kim Whanki grew up comfortably in Eupdong-ri, Kijwado, Anjwa-myeon, Sinan County, Zenranan-dō, Korea, Empire of Japan. After graduating from elementary school, Kim was sent to Seoul to live with his older sister and attend Choongdong Middle School. His family then supported him to study abroad in Tokyo, Japan, where he attended. During his five years of study, he learned to play the violin. Once Kim returned home in 1932, his father objected to Kim's wishes to continue his studies and set Kim to marry.Tokyo, Japan: 1932–1937
Having decided to become an artist against his father's wishes, Kim secretly boarded a vessel bound for Japan. Thus in 1933, at the age of 20, Kim enrolled in the 3-year program offered at the Department of Arts at Nihon University in Tokyo. During his second year into the program, Kim joined the Avant-Garde Western Painting Institute, led by Japanese artists who were introducing to Japan Cubism, Futurism, and Surrealism based on their experience living and working in Europe. Among his mentors were Togo Seiji and Tsuguharu Foujita. In 1935, Kim is awarded for his first submission to the prestigious Second Section Association, When the Skylarks Sing, marking his debut as an artist. The painting portrays a woman dressed in hanbok, whose body was rendered in geometric, simplified forms. The basket upon her head is "transparent" by showing its content at an impossible angle, revealing Kim's interest apart from realism and towards abstraction. His experiments of incorporating Korean motifs as simplified forms onto the flat picture plane continued, as can be seen in House <집> and Sauce Jar Terrace <장독대>. Features 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.During this time Kim participated in activities led by Japan's many artist associations, such as the Hakujitsu Society, Kofu Society, Free Artists' Association, the Room Nine Society, and the Hakuban Society. The 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. His first solo exhibition took place at the Amagi Gallery in Tokyo in January 1937, only months before returning to Korea. Even after he left Tokyo, Kim continued to submit works to the Free Artists' Association in Japan until 1941, including Rondo <론도>. As one of the earliest examples of abstract art in modern Korea, the country's government designated the painting as a Registered Cultural Property in 2013.
He even stayed an additional year in Japan as an assistant before returning to Korea in 1937. Kim's time in Tokyo supported his identity as an Abstract artist. In his university years, he became fascinated by the work of Henri Matisse and 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.
Whanki Kim's early art experimentation with geometric abstraction drew inspiration from Cubism. His first piece that gained popularity was When Skylarks Sing, which depicts a woman holding a basket on top of her head. The building in the background plays with light and shadows and is one of the many geometric shapes that creates depth in the painting. Whanki Kim contrasts the realistic depiction of a traditional Korean woman with an ambiguous background that muddles the exact setting of the painting. There is also a lack of details on the woman's body and face. The 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.
Seoul: 1938–1951
After returning from his studies in Tokyo, Kim continued to befriend members of the Korean literary circle while gaining more interest in traditional Korean art. By 1940, this exhibition was no longer called the Free Artists Exhibition. It was called the Creative Artists Association, due to increasing military tensions that did not encourage new ideas. The 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. Kim 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.In 1944, Kim, who had divorced his first wife, remarried Byun Dong-rim, who was a prodigiously talented writer and widow of poet Yi Sang. Defying the objections from their families, Byun took Kim's art name–Hyang-an–at the time of marriage and lived as such until her death. Kim changed his art name to Su-hwa.
Korea was liberated from Japanese rule in 1945 and established its independent government by 1948. The same year, Kim, along with artists Yoo Youngkuk, Lee Kyusang, created the New Realism Group. Its 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. Navigating 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. Participating members included Chang Ucchin, Paek Youngsu, and Lee Jung-seob.
For the New Realism Group's second exhibition held in 1949, Kim submitted his painting Jar and Flowers <백자와 꽃>. The 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. Since 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 ware made in the Joseon period widely known as moon jars. It is known that he enjoyed displaying and observing Korean pottery in his home, while depicting the very same objects in his paintings. As a motif in Kim's paintings, Korean pottery was employed as an aesthetic solution for reconciling tradition with modernity.
Based on his submissions to the neorealism exhibitions, Kim's works during 1942 and 1950 show inspiration from nature and everyday life. His desire to present pure composition and simplified objects is evident in work such as Woods.
Busan: 1951–1953
During the Korean War, the South Korean government moved to the southern port city of Busan, along with many refugees. Whanki Kim also fled Seoul for safety in the South and entered a refugee camp for three years. These 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. Some of the works produced during this time are Refugee Train <피난열차>, Landscape at Chin-hae, Shanty, and Jars and Women <항아리와 여인들>.Kim's oil painting An Evacuation Train from 1951 is another example of his early abstraction work that reflects his distance from the Korean war. This painting shows a crowd of refugees crammed together in train carriages, creating a claustrophobic environment. While 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. There seems to be a contradiction between the urgent, claustrophobic environment of Koreans fleeing the war and the cartoon-like depiction of the refugees. This painting also reflected a time when abstract American art was promoted by the United States Information. Western art was easily accessible for Korean artists through funded subscriptions to newspapers, magazines, and art journals, which introduced the contemporary trends of abstraction. The 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. This 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.