GALLERY HYUNDAI is pleased to have an exhibition of Works on Paper: Centennial Anniversary of the birth of Kim Whanki for celebrating the centennial anniversary of the birth of Kim Whanki.

Born in 1913, he studied in Tokyo and worked in Korea, Paris, and New York as the frontier of globalizing Korean modern art. As the 1st generation of Korean Modernism and a pioneer of Korean Abstract Art, he embodied the identity of Korean Fine Art through the articulation of Korean lyricism over abstract painting. More than 70 pieces of his oil on paper work that became the foundation of his famous dot paintings in his later years will be displayed at this exhibition.

These pieces, from 1967 to 1973, fully consist the artist's oeuvres while they consistently retain the distinct nature of each different type of papers such as a newspaper or a traditional Korean paper, which he had painted on as if writing down diaries. These pieces that became a portfolio of his dot paintings are appreciated as important works as Oil on Cotton or Oil on Linen.

In February 1985, in Arts , Barry Schwabsky wrote that "One thinks of Whanki's superb paintings on paper. They are done on newsprint, that supremely unclean substance, and the traces of print that seep through the paint only serve to bind the paint to the surface, overcoming its inability to penetrate this support as it did the linen". GALLERY HYUNDAI hold Kim Whanki Retrospective 1954-1970 in 1977, The Era of New York 1966-69 in 1991, Kim Whanki Retrospective 20th Anniversary in 1994, Kim Whanki Memorial 25th Anniversary in 1999, and a large scale of Kim Whanki Retrospective in 2012, and an exhibition of Works on Paper: A Centennial Anniversary of the birth of Kim Whanki in 2013.

Courtesy of Gallery Hyundai