The Making of Modern Korean Art

Tracing the correspondence and careers of four artists blazing a path for Korean modern art across the globe

Published with Tina Kim Gallery.

From the birth of Korean Informal to the emergence of Dansaekhwa, this book is the first comprehensive survey of modern Korean abstraction through the lives of four protagonists: Kim Tschang-Yeul (1929-2021), Kim Whanki (1913-74), Lee Ufan (born 1936) and Park Seo-Bo (1931-2023). These four artists strove for "international contemporaneity" in four different cities: Seoul, Tokyo, Paris and New York. This landmark volume foregrounds the personal correspondences between these pioneering artists as critical documents charting the development of modern Korean art. Newly translated, previously unpublished letters are reproduced here alongside groundbreaking artworks, offering an unprecedented window into the artistic, philosophical and logistical challenges of forging a distinctly Korean modernism.