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Lot Essay
"Rhee’s works show touches of magic colour in simply constructed shapes. There is architectural toughness juxtaposed with soft sensitive emotion."
- Raymond Nacenta
"Some artists, musicians, painters achieve their work painfully, others for whom constant work is enough to bring balance and peace. Rhee Seundja was one of the latter: not afraid to work hard, yet she was always gracefully welcoming and elegant in her manners, with a constant sense of accomplishment. Such traits transpire in her paintings."
It is not with lack of praise that the work’s present owner, Mr. C., remembers Rhee Seundja. Fervent admirer of her work, Mr C. met Rhee Seundja in the 1960s and they have remained friends until the end of her life. Eager to help promote the artist’s work and career both in France and internationally, he had the privilege to accompany the artist through her artistic exploration and acquire a profound understanding of her work. Mr C. acquired La Soirée des Enfants (Lot 26) directly from the artist, and it has not left his side since. Painted in 1962, it is exemplary of Rhee Seundja’s work from the 1960s, with the accumulation of layers of colour quickly shaped into lines, triangles and circles to reveal the forces of nature.
NATURE AND COLOUR AS ANCHORS FOR PERSONAL EXPRESSION
Rhee Seundja was the first Korean artist to arrive in Paris at the beginning of the 1950s. Carrying the weight of the war in Korea, along with family issues that separated her from her three sons, her first years in Paris were formative for the rest of her artistic career. With no former training in art, she was soon recognised for her artistic abilities and encouraged to attend the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Montparnasse. Surrounded by artists that would become the famous “Ecole de Paris”, she learned quickly and developed her own style and representation of art. Under the leadership of Henri Goetz, whom she assisted during his teaching at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, she discovered lyrical abstraction, shaping her first figurative pieces followed by abstract works.
Unlike other Korean artists studying in Paris at the time, Rhee’s lack of artistic training in Asia protected her from a torn identity evoked by an endless battle between Orientalist and Western modes of expression. Free to explore according to her inner affinities, she was able to cultivate subjects dear to her: colour and nature. The works of Pierre Bonnard and Sonia Delaunay imbedded in her the power of colours, which she continuously explored through her works. The balance of pure and vivid colours in her paintings reveal her mood and identity. Equally inherent to her work is the omnipresence of nature in perfect symbiosis with her life and her beliefs. Her quest to surround herself with the earth and natural elements is rooted from her childhood spent travelling through Korean mountains with her mother. Such connection with nature inevitably led her to explore artistic expression through different media, and in particular woodblock prints.
Looking back on her artistic development, Rhee Seundja categorized her different thematic and stylistic phases without hesitation, part of an effort to constantly evolve and reject the stable satisfaction of popularity, as she favoured the exploration of themes that resonated with her inner personality. Starting from earthly grounds, her themes gradually climb towards the cosmos.
"Colours on the painter’s palette evoke a double effect: a purely physical effect on the eye which is charmed by the beauty of colors, similar to the joyful impression when we eat a delicacy. This effect can be much deeper, however, causing a vibration of the soul or an ‘inner resonance’- a spiritual effect in which the colour touches the soul itself."
- Wassily Kandinsky
WOMAN AND EARTH: THE ARTIST REVEALED
The “Woman and Earth” series from the 1960s characterises her motherhood and womanhood as deeply linked to nature: “In order to demonstrate the partnership between earth and woman, both at the origin of life, I use simple geometric symbols: triangles, squares, circles, straight lines. Universal signs transcending borders and time.”
The artist’s separation with her children at a young age enhanced her need to express motherhood, even at an immeasurable distance. The act of painting itself seemed to her like raising her children. La Soirée de Enfants is particularly evocative of this period, not only by its title (translated from French as The Children’s Evening), but also in the way the painting is applied on the canvas. The countless quick colourful brushstrokes constitute multiple layers and create an effect of working through space by using stabbing motions with a wooden stick, rather than brush strokes. The application of saturated blue, red and ochre tones create a contrasted woven pathway across the composition, supplemented with geometric shapes –circles, semi-circles, triangles. The intricate balance and depth of colours resembles the work of Frantisek Kupka, whose quest for movement and energy through the application of colour is so emblematic of the first half of the 20th Century.
In La Soirée des Enfants , just as a farmer cultivates his land with daily care and leaves regular furrows behind him, Rhee gives the viewer a chance to witness the building of a universe, with powerful vibrant strokes accumulating layer upon layer, from the ground up. And with each layer, emotions of her womanhood and motherhood are revealed.
- Raymond Nacenta
"Some artists, musicians, painters achieve their work painfully, others for whom constant work is enough to bring balance and peace. Rhee Seundja was one of the latter: not afraid to work hard, yet she was always gracefully welcoming and elegant in her manners, with a constant sense of accomplishment. Such traits transpire in her paintings."
It is not with lack of praise that the work’s present owner, Mr. C., remembers Rhee Seundja. Fervent admirer of her work, Mr C. met Rhee Seundja in the 1960s and they have remained friends until the end of her life. Eager to help promote the artist’s work and career both in France and internationally, he had the privilege to accompany the artist through her artistic exploration and acquire a profound understanding of her work. Mr C. acquired La Soirée des Enfants (Lot 26) directly from the artist, and it has not left his side since. Painted in 1962, it is exemplary of Rhee Seundja’s work from the 1960s, with the accumulation of layers of colour quickly shaped into lines, triangles and circles to reveal the forces of nature.
NATURE AND COLOUR AS ANCHORS FOR PERSONAL EXPRESSION
Rhee Seundja was the first Korean artist to arrive in Paris at the beginning of the 1950s. Carrying the weight of the war in Korea, along with family issues that separated her from her three sons, her first years in Paris were formative for the rest of her artistic career. With no former training in art, she was soon recognised for her artistic abilities and encouraged to attend the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Montparnasse. Surrounded by artists that would become the famous “Ecole de Paris”, she learned quickly and developed her own style and representation of art. Under the leadership of Henri Goetz, whom she assisted during his teaching at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, she discovered lyrical abstraction, shaping her first figurative pieces followed by abstract works.
Unlike other Korean artists studying in Paris at the time, Rhee’s lack of artistic training in Asia protected her from a torn identity evoked by an endless battle between Orientalist and Western modes of expression. Free to explore according to her inner affinities, she was able to cultivate subjects dear to her: colour and nature. The works of Pierre Bonnard and Sonia Delaunay imbedded in her the power of colours, which she continuously explored through her works. The balance of pure and vivid colours in her paintings reveal her mood and identity. Equally inherent to her work is the omnipresence of nature in perfect symbiosis with her life and her beliefs. Her quest to surround herself with the earth and natural elements is rooted from her childhood spent travelling through Korean mountains with her mother. Such connection with nature inevitably led her to explore artistic expression through different media, and in particular woodblock prints.
Looking back on her artistic development, Rhee Seundja categorized her different thematic and stylistic phases without hesitation, part of an effort to constantly evolve and reject the stable satisfaction of popularity, as she favoured the exploration of themes that resonated with her inner personality. Starting from earthly grounds, her themes gradually climb towards the cosmos.
"Colours on the painter’s palette evoke a double effect: a purely physical effect on the eye which is charmed by the beauty of colors, similar to the joyful impression when we eat a delicacy. This effect can be much deeper, however, causing a vibration of the soul or an ‘inner resonance’- a spiritual effect in which the colour touches the soul itself."
- Wassily Kandinsky
WOMAN AND EARTH: THE ARTIST REVEALED
The “Woman and Earth” series from the 1960s characterises her motherhood and womanhood as deeply linked to nature: “In order to demonstrate the partnership between earth and woman, both at the origin of life, I use simple geometric symbols: triangles, squares, circles, straight lines. Universal signs transcending borders and time.”
The artist’s separation with her children at a young age enhanced her need to express motherhood, even at an immeasurable distance. The act of painting itself seemed to her like raising her children. La Soirée de Enfants is particularly evocative of this period, not only by its title (translated from French as The Children’s Evening), but also in the way the painting is applied on the canvas. The countless quick colourful brushstrokes constitute multiple layers and create an effect of working through space by using stabbing motions with a wooden stick, rather than brush strokes. The application of saturated blue, red and ochre tones create a contrasted woven pathway across the composition, supplemented with geometric shapes –circles, semi-circles, triangles. The intricate balance and depth of colours resembles the work of Frantisek Kupka, whose quest for movement and energy through the application of colour is so emblematic of the first half of the 20th Century.
In La Soirée des Enfants , just as a farmer cultivates his land with daily care and leaves regular furrows behind him, Rhee gives the viewer a chance to witness the building of a universe, with powerful vibrant strokes accumulating layer upon layer, from the ground up. And with each layer, emotions of her womanhood and motherhood are revealed.