Yoo Youngkuk

Yoo Youngkuk (劉永國; denoted as YYK) is a pioneer of the modern art in Korea and the first abstract painter. Yoo Younkuk and Kim Whanki (金煥基) are regarded as two grand masters of Korean abstract painting. Born in a well-to-do family in Uljin, YYK graduated from the oil painting department of the Bunka Gakuin University (文化學院) in Tokyo (1938), where he encountered abstract painting from the West and decided to be an abstract painter. Interacting closely with Murai Masanari and Hasegawa Saburo, pioneers of Japanese abstract painting, YYK participated actively in avant-garde movements in Japan and became a fellow of the Association of Free Artists (自由美術家協會, AFA). After eight years of stay in Tokyo, YYK returned to Korea in 1943. Years later (1948), he founded the “Sinsasil-pa (新寫實派, New Realism Group)” with Kim Whanki and Lee Kyusang (李揆祥), the first avant-garde group in Korea, and taught at the Seoul National University as a professor for two years. However, YYK couldn't engage in painting for more than a decade due to social turbulence during the Pacific and Korean wars. When he resumed his painting career after the war, modern art in Korea was in its embryonic stage, and YYK played a major role in setting the overall direction as well as contextualizing and fixating modern art in Korea by organizing various groups and participating in exhibitions. Mountain was a favorite motif of his paintings, and he became known as “the painter of mountains”. After the Sao Paulo biennial in 1963, YYK withdrew from group activities and focused on solo exhibitions which were held every other year for two decades. The painting style was changed from color fields to geometric forms and so on, and the style uniquely attributed to him nowadays was created in this period. The first solo exhibition held...