Biography

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金煥基, Kim WhanKi

From the late 1930s, Kim Whanki (1913-1974) pioneered Abstract Art and led korean Modernism in art. In the 1950s his poetic world was accomplished by modernized and abstracted beauty based on Korean motifs; ceramics, traditional symbols of longevity, plum blossom. And later he used natural motifs : mountains, rivers, and the moon through his Paris period and Seoul period. 

His activity in art reached a culmination in his New York period from 1963, when he received the Honorary Award in the Sao Paulo Biennale, to 1974 when he passes away. Until the 1950s, his art realized Korean sentiments in refined and condensed form but, in the 1960s in the New York period, he intensified a more universal and inner lyrical world with basic formative elements such as dot, lines, and planes.