In 1948 Kwon Jinkyu (1922-1973) went to Japan to study sculpture at Musashino Art School, which is now Musashino Art University. He was awarded Grand Prize at the Nikaten Exhibition in 1953. In 1959 he returned to Korea in the midst of his active artistic career in Japan. After his return, he established his own artistic style that was exemplified by his sculptures for which he used terracotta and lacquer as main materials. He delved into a variety of subjects such as male and female figures, animals and abstract images in diverse art forms such as painting and drawing as well as sculpture both in the round and in relief. This exhibition consists of six parts through which one can observe his oeuvre made from his school days to his latter years. One will experience his entire artistic achievement through his remarkable artworks including his work for the graduation exhibition, which is shown to the public for the first time half a century after its production, and a large number of works, which has been not shown until now.
1. School Days
Standing Man and Young Man in bronze that Kwon made during his study in Japan demonstrate less Kwon’s distinctive style than the influence of his teacher Shimizu Takashi who emphasized the importance of structure and form based on accurate preliminary sketching. What is most worthy of our attention among these works is Nude. This standing nude made of plaster was made for his graduation. Its natural movement produces different views of volumes from different angles. In the early 1950s he produced mainly sculptures of either his own face or his first wife Tomo. One can imagine how much love he had for Tomo through his sculptures of the face of Tomo in a variety of materials such as stone, plaster and terracotta. The artistic tendency of his early years can also be examined through the ‘Head of Horse’ Series and ‘Self-portrait’ Series which continued to be made until the 1970s. Kwon expressed his artistic concerns by using various materials such as stone, wood, plaster, bronze and terracotta, and these works foretell what he unfolded in his later artistic career.
2. Human Figures
The female figures he made after his return to Korea assume a variety of poses: with knees together; sitting with one knee up; with a child in her arms; sitting up straight. This indicates that he intended to render as many movements as possible within a limited space. Unlike his seated and standing figures in which movement is expressed, his heads and busts have a static quality. In these busts, the head and the part below the neck are boldly simplified and the overall images are of elongation and leanness. His depiction of sunken eyes, a high nose bridge, a round-shaped head and a narrow face attests to the fact that he attempted to express ideal facial features rather than those of typical Koreans. What he wanted to achieve was the appearance of the most pure soul, in other words, eternity beyond the boundary between life and death. The steady, open eyes penetrate into truth, and keen gazes deliver messages silently and simultaneously seem to reveal certain longing. He applied different colors to similar shapes or made different use of the same material. This variation reflects his artistic attitude to generate certain artistic results by inducing subtle changes in the objecthood of material.
3. Self-portraits
Kwon depicted himself in many drawings and sculptural works, and he explained the relationship between the model and the artist through the equation, “the model + the artist = the artwork.” Since he attempted to put the inner world of the model into his art, it can be said that the better he knew about the model, the better his work resulted. His own face laid upon non-figurative images made around 1969-1970 reveals that he regarded his artistic work as an act to seek after truth. He produced masks besides busts. His heads in the form of a death mask capture the human soul in between life and the hereafter.
He unfolded his artistic ideas through his self-portraits, and this can be backed up by several facts: he made a large number of drawings of himself; the image of his self-portrait was given emphasis in the poster for his first solo exhibition in 1965; finally, he stated in his curriculum vitae his self-portraits as his representative works.
4. Reliefs: The Encounter between the Figurative and the Abstract
Korean art from the 1950s to the 1970s can be characterized by the coexistence of the figurative and the abstract. Kwon moved toward the abstract from the figurative by simplifying his images as if purifying the shape, and this encounter between the figurative and the abstract is mostly clearly exemplified by his reliefs. The dynamic rhythms of lines, the use of colors and the tangibility of his handwork on the surface attest to the fact that he found much delight in making these reliefs. The element of playfulness is detected in his dexterous handwork of hammering, rasping and dabbing. He increased formal freedom by not focusing on a specific subject in his reliefs, and further he actively integrated abstract elements into his reliefs. In addition, he carried out various formal experiments also in terms of form and method by transforming traditional patterns and making collages.
5. Animal Sculptures
Kwon made also both figurative and abstract sculptures of various animals such as the horse, the bull, the bird and the cat in diverse art forms. Especially, the horse was one of his most important motifs. The theme of the horse is rendered through works of different art forms such as black ink drawing and sculpture both in relief and in the round. His great affection for the motif of the horse can be evidenced by the humor markedly detected in his works of the horse.
Unlike the subject of the horse in which he continued to show interest, that of the bull started to be seen in the works made after the 1960s. His interest in the motif of the bull seems to have originated both from his own concern with the traditional and from the influence of the artistic tendency of the times to express what was Korean.
6. Shimizu Takashi and E. A. Bourdelle
The last part of the exhibition consists of 12 works by Takashi and 5 works by Bourdelle. Takashi met Bourdelle in 1923 when he went to France to study paining. Afterwards, he studied sculpture at Bourdelle’s studio. Having been influenced by Bourdelle’s realism and his emphasis on constructiveness and originality and at the same time having established his own distinctive art world, Takashi left his footmarks in the history of modern Japanese sculpture. He attached the equal weight both to the undistorted perception of the reality and to the traditional, and this belief of his was realized by his attempt to faithfully follow the basics of sculpture regardless of those of the East or the West.
Bourdelle's reliefs are the studies for the relief work for the façade of Theatre Champs-Elysées. These terracotta reliefs in person since Takashi had them in his collection for quite a long time and were donated to National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo by Shimizu wife. As Kwon saw the exhibition of Bourdelle in Japan and Shimizu's Bourdelle collection as well, he was inspired a lot from both artists.
