An English art historian praised Kim Whanki as ‘possibly Korea’s most famous 20th century painter’. He is regarded as having inherited the tradition of Korea’s conventional painting, and has made unequaled achievements in the aspect of modern western art -- anti-abstract, abstract and dot abstract painting.
He left behind the well-known phrase that ‘the most Korean style is the most international style’. Many artists and painters still regard this as a golden rule in their creations.
As he said, Kim embraced mainstream culture while constantly striving to re-interpret it from the perspective of subjectivity. His paintings are somewhat like visual evidence with the intention of re-setting his ‘otherness’ as a subject. Such ‘subjectification of the other’ was neither simply going along with the atmosphere of the mainstream nor emphasizing the features of ‘otherness’. It is apparent that his subject matters and styles expose and reveal his attempts to combine the two cultures by raising the western mainstream culture within his own culture, the peripheral eastern art world.
About the Artist
Artist Kim Whan Ki born 10 1973 belongs to the 1st generation of Korean modern abstract art. Studying in Japan University School of Arts, Tokyo in 1930s, he had joined The group and held the 1st private exhibition.
Coming home to Korea in 1937, he had cultivated gifted students in Seoul National and Hongik University. To focus on formative arts, he had used as materials the landscape full of national sentiment-mountains, the moon, rivers, apricot trees, white porcelains of the Chosun Dynasty.
Even during 3 years when he stayed in Paris, Kim had grouped for his own creative pictures, using abstract expressions from the motive ‘the Korean landscape’. In 1963m Kim participated in the 7th Sao Paulo Biennale as a representative painter of South Korea and received the Honorary Award in the category of paintings.
Taking this opportunity, He moved into New York. There, He had established his own peculiar artistic realm ‘Pointllism’, based on Korean lyrical sentiment and become widely known to Paris and new York, the center of modern arts as well as South Korea.