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Lot Essay
"The roundness very much implies the subtle, the delicate and the subdued." - Kim Whan-ki, January, 1963
Kim Whan-ki was one of the pioneers of abstract painting in Korea. He traveled to many countries during his life, the goal of his search being none other than to discover a modernist painting vocabulary for the Korean culture. Eventually settling in New York after representing Korea at the Bienal de São Paulo in 1963, he abandoned figuration completely to explore American abstract art. Merging the high chroma colors of Abstract Expressionism with evocation of the natural world, Kim's Untitled is one of the classic works of his early New York period (1963-74).
The circle was always an indispensable element of Kim Whan-ki's art. From his round Jars to the recurring moon motifs of the 1950s in his work, Kim moved on to Untitled, In which he arranges a collection of oval shapes of various sizes vertically, and furthermore to outline each in light gray color reminiscent of ink contour in traditional paintings, resulting in a meditative atmosphere.. The circular forms in Kim's works would continue to evolve, beginning as ovals that were gradually scaled down until-in the end-they became dots. When the dots on his canvases evolved as a stylized manner, Kim entered the final summit of his career-dot paintings. The contemporaneity and inwardness of Kim Whan-ki's work gained him increasingly wider international recognition and sparked renewed appreciation of his work; at the same time, the parents of the current owner of Untitled were so deeply struck by it that they made a simultaneous purchase of three other Kim Whan-ki works, all of which had been passed on to their children as gifts.
Kim Whan-ki was one of the pioneers of abstract painting in Korea. He traveled to many countries during his life, the goal of his search being none other than to discover a modernist painting vocabulary for the Korean culture. Eventually settling in New York after representing Korea at the Bienal de São Paulo in 1963, he abandoned figuration completely to explore American abstract art. Merging the high chroma colors of Abstract Expressionism with evocation of the natural world, Kim's Untitled is one of the classic works of his early New York period (1963-74).
The circle was always an indispensable element of Kim Whan-ki's art. From his round Jars to the recurring moon motifs of the 1950s in his work, Kim moved on to Untitled, In which he arranges a collection of oval shapes of various sizes vertically, and furthermore to outline each in light gray color reminiscent of ink contour in traditional paintings, resulting in a meditative atmosphere.. The circular forms in Kim's works would continue to evolve, beginning as ovals that were gradually scaled down until-in the end-they became dots. When the dots on his canvases evolved as a stylized manner, Kim entered the final summit of his career-dot paintings. The contemporaneity and inwardness of Kim Whan-ki's work gained him increasingly wider international recognition and sparked renewed appreciation of his work; at the same time, the parents of the current owner of Untitled were so deeply struck by it that they made a simultaneous purchase of three other Kim Whan-ki works, all of which had been passed on to their children as gifts.