Image provided by Gallery Hyundai
Gallery Hyundai
* Source: Multilingual Glossary of Korean Art. Korea Arts Management Service
Related
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Hwarang
Hwarang was founded in September 1973 by Gallery Hyundai (a space former titled Hyundai Hwarang). The magazine’s motto was to provide a “young magazine created by young publishers, editors, and readers” and aimed to act as an intermediary between art and the public by discovering outstanding artists and their works. Art experts such as Oh Kwangsu, Park Raekyung, Lee Hongwoo, Lee Guyeol and Heo Younghwan participated as members of the editorial board. The magazine utilized a small size (19x13cm) for readers to hold and read it comfortably. The cover of the first issue was Cheon Kyung-ja’s A Portrait of a Lady, and each issue featured an interview with an artist, an atelier tour, a collector's essay, a review, and a discussion. It attempted to transform itself into Hyundaimisul (Modern Art) starting with the autumn issue of 1988 and continued until 1992. A total of 76 volumes (60 volumes of Hwarang and 16 volumes of Hyundaimisul) played a role in conveying knowledge to art dealers, buyers, and general art lovers, despite some criticism that they advertised artists excessively.
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Lee Gu-yeol
Lee Gu-yeol(1932-2020) was the first art journalist, an art critic, and a researcher of modern art in Korea. Born in Yeonbaek, Hwanghae-do Province, Lee went to South Korea during the Korean War. He enlisted in the army as a cadet, completed infantry and artillery schools, and served as an officer during the war. After being discharged as a captain in 1958, he joined World Telecommunications and worked in the publications department. In 1959, he enrolled as a junior in the College of Fine Arts at Hongik University, but he could not finish his studies. He worked as an art reporter in the culture desk of Segye Ilbo newspaper (renamed the Minguk Ilbo in 1960) and then as a reporter and deputy head of the culture desk of Kyunghyang Shinmun newspaper in and after 1962. In 1970, he transferred to Seoul Sinmun newspaper and served as the head of its culture desk. He became the head of the culture desk of Daehan Ilbo newspaper in 1972 but ended his journalistic career when the company ceased to publish in 1975. In 1964, Lee was in charge of editing the quarterly magazine Misul (Art) (published by Munhwa Gyoyuk Chulpansa). He also organized the publication of fifteen volumes of the Complete Collection of Korean Art (sponsored by Donghwa Chulpan Gongsa) and worked as chief editor from 1973 through 1975. He served as president of the Korean Art Critics Association (1984–1985), a member of the Cultural Heritage Committee of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism (1992–1999), and as director of exhibition projects at the Seoul Arts Center (1993–1996). He also opened the Korean Modern Art Research Institute and published its irregular periodical Modern Art of Korea from the first to fifth issues (1975–1977). His books include The Realm of Painting: The Life and Art of Idang (1968), A Study on Modern Korean Art (1972), The Development of Modern Korean Art (1982), Research on Modern Korean Art History (1992), History of Modern Korean Painting (1993), 50 Years of North Korean Art (2001), The Story behind Modern Korean Art (2005), Rha Hyeseok: The Woman Who Drew Her Fiery Life (2011), Korean Cultural Heritage: A History of Suffering (2013), and My Days as an Art Reporter (2014). In 2018, he published two volumes of his self-edited literary collection Miscellany by Cheongyeo to celebrate his turning eighty-eight. Lee Gyu-yeol played a crucial role in the establishment of the Archives of Korean Art Journal, the first art archives in Korea, in December 1998 by donating his materials related to modern and contemporary art to the Samsung Museum of Art. In 2015, he donated more than 4,000 items to Gacheon Museum of the Gil Cultural Foundation. He passed away in 2020 at the age of eighty-nine.
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Abstract art
A term which can be used to describe any non-figurative painting or sculpture. Abstract art is also called non-representational art or non-objective art, and throughout the 20th century has constituted an important current in the development of Modernist art. In Korea, Abstract art was first introduced by Kim Whanki and Yoo Youngkuk, students in Japan who had participated in the Free Artists Association and the Avant-Garde Group Exhibition during the late 1930s. These artists, however, had little influence in Korea, and abstract art flourished only after the Korean War. In the 1950s so called “Cubist images,” which separated the object into numerous overlapping shapes, were often described as Abstractionist, but only with the emergence of Informel painting in the late 1950s could the term “abstract” be strictly used to describe the creation of works that did not reference any exterior subject matter. The abstract movements of geometric abstractionism and dansaekhwa dominated the art establishment in Korea in the late-1970s. By the 1980s, however, with the rising interest in the politically focused figurative art of Minjung, abstraction was often criticized as aestheticist, elitist, and Western-centric.
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