Description
Dansaekhwa (Korean: 단색화, hanja 單色畵, also known as Tansaekhwa), often translated as "monochrome painting" from Korean, is a retroactive term grouping together disparate artworks that were exhibited in South Korea beginning in the mid 1970s. While the wide range of artists whose work critics and art historians consider to fall under this category are often exhibited together, they were never part of an official artistic movement nor produced a manifesto. Nonetheless, their artistic practices are seen to share "a commitment to thinking more intensively about the constituent elements of mark, line, frame, surface and space around which they understood the medium of painting." Their interests compose a diverse set of formal concerns that cannot be reduced to a preference for limited color palettes. Read more ↗
Key Artists
Park Seo-bo
Widely regarded as the father of Dansaekhwa, famous for his iconic 'Écriture' series where he repeatedly inscribed pencil lines into wet oil and gesso canvas to empty the self.
Lee Ufan
Leading theorist and philosopher of both Mono-ha in Japan and Dansaekhwa in Korea, creating 'From Point' and 'From Line' series by systematically loading a brush and dragging it across the canvas until the pigment exhausted.
Yun Hyong-keun
Prominent master who applied mixtures of raw umber and ultramarine blue directly onto raw cotton or hemp, letting the paint naturally bleed and stain like traditional Korean calligraphy.
Ha Chong-hyun
Innovator of the 'Conjunction' series who pushed thick oil paint from the backside through the coarse weave of burlap, then scraped and manipulated the oozing pigment on the front.
Chung Sang-hwa
Master known for meditative, highly labor-intensive grids created by folding canvas covered in kaolin clay, cracking it, stripping pieces away, and filling the fissures with acrylic paint.
Chung Chang-sup
Key Dansaekhwa figure who abandoned Western oil paint to work exclusively with traditional Korean 'tak' (mulberry bark fiber), kneading and adhering the raw, damp pulp directly onto canvas.
Choi Byung-so
Associated master who performatively obliterated entire newspaper sheets by obsessively scribbling over every letter with ballpoint pens and pencils until the paper blackened and tore.
Famous Artworks
Écriture No. 37-75
Park Seo-bo · 1975
Museum of Modern Art, New York / Tokyo Gallery - Pencil on wet oil and gesso on canvas
From Line No. 780132
Lee Ufan · 1978
Art Institute of Chicago / National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo - Mineral pigment and glue on canvas
Conjunction 74-26
Ha Chong-hyun · 1974
Museum of Modern Art, New York / Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum - Oil on hemp cloth (burlap)
Umber-Blue 78-1
Yun Hyong-keun · 1978
National Museum of Modern Art, Seoul / Chinati Foundation, Marfa - Oil on raw linen
Untitled 79-5-24
Chung Sang-hwa · 1979
Art Institute of Chicago / Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art - Acrylic on canvas
Fun Facts
Although these artists began producing their meditative monochrome works in the early 1970s, the term 'Dansaekhwa' (specifically the Korean pronunciation of monochrome painting) was not widely used until curator Yoon Jin Sup retroactively applied it in a milestone 2000 exhibition at the Gwangju Biennale.
↗ Source: en.wikipedia.org
Dansaekhwa emerged during one of the darkest chapters of South Korean history under the authoritarian Yusin military dictatorship of Park Chung Hee in the 1970s; many artists turned to repetitive, wordless, physical canvas rituals as a form of stoic inner resistance and mental survival when explicit political speech was strictly censored.
↗ Source: en.wikipedia.org
Shop
