Description
Chosŏnhwa (Korean: 조선화), meaning "Joseon painting" or "Korean painting", and also known as Juche realism, is the main artistic style of state sanctioned art in North Korea.
Chosŏnhwa seeks to modernize traditional brush-and-ink paintings within the stylistic and ideological criteria of Juche aesthetics. The North Korean ideology of Juche is a version of the socialist ideals with more emphasis on self-reliance of the state and the dominion of man over everything. Similarly, Juche realism is the localized North Korean adaptation of Socialist realism. Chosŏnhwa is the defining art style for North Korea's visual culture and embodies the needs and ideals of the state as it emerged from a turbulent post-colonial and post-war political climate. Chosŏnhwa serves as the singular representational art that the state allows where everything else is censored. Read more ↗
Key Artists
Jong Chang-mo
Renowned North Korean painter and People's Artist at the Mansudae Art Studio, celebrated for infusing traditional ink brush-and-wash techniques with lyrical seasonal landscapes.
Sun Mu
Former North Korean propaganda artist trained in Socialist Realism and Chosŏnhwa techniques who defected to South Korea, now famous for subversive pop-political parodies of state imagery.
Kim Kwan-ho
Pioneering early 20th-century Korean painter and academician who helped establish the foundational institutions of North Korean state art after 1948, bridging Western oil painting and Chosŏnhwa.
Gil Jin-seop
Influential early North Korean state artist and theorist who shaped the transition from Japanese colonial academic styles toward the nationalistic, state-prescribed aesthetics of Chosŏnhwa.
Kim Ki-man
Prominent North Korean People's Artist who preserved traditional East Asian ink-and-wash floral and wildlife painting within the state-mandated Chosŏnhwa paradigm.
Choe Kye-geun
Celebrated People's Artist and long-time landscape painter at the Mansudae Art Studio whose monumental ink compositions depict North Korea's sacred mountains and industrial dams.
Famous Artworks
Mount Kumgang in Spring
Jong Chang-mo · 1980
Korean Art Gallery, Pyongyang / Mansudae Art Studio - Hanging scroll, ink and color on Korean mulberry paper
Happy Children under the Sun
Mansudae Art Studio Collective · 1975
Korean Art Gallery, Pyongyang - Monumental ink and color on paper (Chosŏnhwa)
Fun Facts
While 'Dongyanghwa' (East Asian painting) was traditionally painted with soft, watery ink washes that left extensive blank space, North Korea's state-sanctioned 'Chosŏnhwa' requires dense, vivid mineral coloring and crisp, clean brushwork to eliminate shadows and project an unclouded, optimistic socialist reality.
↗ Source: en.wikipedia.org
The Mansudae Art Studio in Pyongyang, founded in 1959, is one of the largest state-run art production factories in the world, employing over 4,000 workers - including nearly 1,000 elite artists - who produce all official domestic Chosŏnhwa paintings and public monuments.
↗ Source: en.wikipedia.org
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