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拍品专文
Nam Kwan is widely known as a painter who epitomized the archetype o Korean aesthetics. He is also highly regarded as one of the important pioneers in the history of Korean modern art along with his contemporary artist, Rhee Seundja and Kim Whan-Ki. Like many other modern Korean artists, Nam Kwan first encountered Western abstract art indirectly in Japan. Under Japanese academicism, Nam intensively probed a wide range of European oil paintings from Impressionism to Cubism and Fauvism, seeking his own colours and compositional forms. Though he had always craved originality in his art, it was, however, the Korean War that desperately urged him to develop his own style suitable for expressing his tragic and horrendous experience of war.
In 1955, Nam decided to move to Paris in order to gain direct exposure to Western art, develop his own visual language by learning from Western masters who had successfully expressed their war experiences and also practice his art in a new environment. At that time, Paris was filled with a flow of Informel movement and Nam vigorously absorbed tachisme technique of dripping paints only because he found it most appropriate to create texture he wanted to express.
Nam Kwan was already an influential figure in the local art scene of Korea as an established painter when he left for Paris. After witnessing the tragedy of the Korean War, which lasted for three years from 1950 to 1953, Nam felt his proficient technique for figurative painting in an academic style was not sufficient to express himself in his work. He felt that this accomplishment in technique became a sort of obstacle to describe fully the cruelty of the war and in fact impeded his desire to embody his ambivalent feelings of despair and hope for the future in his art. This urgency and sincerity to find his own visual language lead him to give up his stable career and life in Korea and depart for a new environment. Nam’s experimental journey for his own style of abstract painting was very fruitful. In 1956, only one year after settling in Paris, Nam was invited into the group exhibition at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. From 1958, he was regularly asked to participate in Salon de Mai, which played a central role in the art circle of Paris during the 1950s and 1960s, until his return to Korea in 1968. The Grand Prize by the Manton Biennale in 1966 is probably one of the most visible laurels Nam acquired in Paris.
Even during his stay in Paris from 1955 to 1968, Nam’s influence never ceased in Korea. Featured here, Ancient Relics (Lot 56), represents one of most captivating examples of artistic abstraction in Nam's body of work. By the early 1960s in Paris, through intensive experimentation with various materials and techniques, Nam began to develop his signature style and motif: unique shapes evoking letters, historical remains, and stones. As he recalls, “I am employing old themes from my motherland-ancient remains, masks, ancient plant pattern.” Unlike renowned Western calligraphy abstract paintings by Hans Hartung, Mark Tobey, and Franz Klein, who pursued free brushstrokes of spontaneous energy and action, Nam preferred to meticulously construct the canvas using architectural shapes and letters. In 1968, Jean-Jacques Leveque, one among many noted French critics who praised Nam’s works wrote, “Nam seeks for the truth and perpetuity. Through his horrendous experience during the Korean War, Nam has been searching for the substance, not the incidental. It is crucial to understand that he saw rebirth and hope from death.”
In Ancient Relics , the first thing that impresses the viewer is the richness of surface with many layers superimposed by various techniques which produces an interesting palette that combines a balance of restrained, muted colours with flashes of strong colours. By applying elements of condensation and diffusion, Nam reflects his profound pursuit of harmony between chaos and order, memory and unconsciousness, and the organic and inorganic. Unifying the form and content, Nam successfully displays hope, the nature of existence beyond futility and the agony of life, as the title signifies. As Jon C. Covell once said, “Only an inspired artist can guide us to this magic land,” Ancient Relics will take the viewer to the magic land of ultimate harmony and peace beyond struggle, between life and death.
Pursued by public and private collections alike, Nam’s works can be found in the permanent collections of the Samsung Museum of Art in Seoul and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Gwacheon among many others. Nam is also the recipient of many notable art awards including the Grand Prize for painting, the Manton Biennale, France.
In 1955, Nam decided to move to Paris in order to gain direct exposure to Western art, develop his own visual language by learning from Western masters who had successfully expressed their war experiences and also practice his art in a new environment. At that time, Paris was filled with a flow of Informel movement and Nam vigorously absorbed tachisme technique of dripping paints only because he found it most appropriate to create texture he wanted to express.
Nam Kwan was already an influential figure in the local art scene of Korea as an established painter when he left for Paris. After witnessing the tragedy of the Korean War, which lasted for three years from 1950 to 1953, Nam felt his proficient technique for figurative painting in an academic style was not sufficient to express himself in his work. He felt that this accomplishment in technique became a sort of obstacle to describe fully the cruelty of the war and in fact impeded his desire to embody his ambivalent feelings of despair and hope for the future in his art. This urgency and sincerity to find his own visual language lead him to give up his stable career and life in Korea and depart for a new environment. Nam’s experimental journey for his own style of abstract painting was very fruitful. In 1956, only one year after settling in Paris, Nam was invited into the group exhibition at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. From 1958, he was regularly asked to participate in Salon de Mai, which played a central role in the art circle of Paris during the 1950s and 1960s, until his return to Korea in 1968. The Grand Prize by the Manton Biennale in 1966 is probably one of the most visible laurels Nam acquired in Paris.
Even during his stay in Paris from 1955 to 1968, Nam’s influence never ceased in Korea. Featured here, Ancient Relics (Lot 56), represents one of most captivating examples of artistic abstraction in Nam's body of work. By the early 1960s in Paris, through intensive experimentation with various materials and techniques, Nam began to develop his signature style and motif: unique shapes evoking letters, historical remains, and stones. As he recalls, “I am employing old themes from my motherland-ancient remains, masks, ancient plant pattern.” Unlike renowned Western calligraphy abstract paintings by Hans Hartung, Mark Tobey, and Franz Klein, who pursued free brushstrokes of spontaneous energy and action, Nam preferred to meticulously construct the canvas using architectural shapes and letters. In 1968, Jean-Jacques Leveque, one among many noted French critics who praised Nam’s works wrote, “Nam seeks for the truth and perpetuity. Through his horrendous experience during the Korean War, Nam has been searching for the substance, not the incidental. It is crucial to understand that he saw rebirth and hope from death.”
In Ancient Relics , the first thing that impresses the viewer is the richness of surface with many layers superimposed by various techniques which produces an interesting palette that combines a balance of restrained, muted colours with flashes of strong colours. By applying elements of condensation and diffusion, Nam reflects his profound pursuit of harmony between chaos and order, memory and unconsciousness, and the organic and inorganic. Unifying the form and content, Nam successfully displays hope, the nature of existence beyond futility and the agony of life, as the title signifies. As Jon C. Covell once said, “Only an inspired artist can guide us to this magic land,” Ancient Relics will take the viewer to the magic land of ultimate harmony and peace beyond struggle, between life and death.
Pursued by public and private collections alike, Nam’s works can be found in the permanent collections of the Samsung Museum of Art in Seoul and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Gwacheon among many others. Nam is also the recipient of many notable art awards including the Grand Prize for painting, the Manton Biennale, France.