Kim belongs to the first generation of Korean Abstract artists, mixing oriental concepts and ideals with abstraction. With refined and moderated formative expression based on Korean Lyricism, he created his characteristic art world. His artworks largely dealt with diverse hues and patterns. Kim's early works were semi-abstract paintings which allowed viewers to see certain forms, but his later works were more deeply absorbed abstract paintings, filled with lines and spaces.
The artist's partner Hyang-an Kim established the Whanki Foundation in 1978 and opened the Whanki Museum in 1992. The Museum, located in Seoul, was built by Korean American architect Kyu Sung Woo.
A pioneer of abstract painting and the godfather of the Dansaekhwa movement, Whanki Kim established his place in Korean history and art at an early age. Whanki Kim was an artist whose profound impact on the history of Korean art was seen in the first wave of abstract art. His nomadic lifestyle led him to many different places, like Japan, France, and the U.S., which differentiated his artwork from other artists, who created their art based in Korea, due to the lack of opportunities for travel. As a peripatetic artist gaining inspiration from artists of other origins, Whanki Kim's style of abstract art transformed from geometric abstraction to art with traditional Korean motifs to monochrome paintings of dots and lines. He balanced keeping Korean values and beliefs close and incorporating new foreign techniques into his works, which evidently reflect his personal identity and Korea's national identity, impacted by the political and social conditions of the mid-1900s.
Biography
Early Life
Born as the fourth child of a prosperous farming and landowning family headed by Kim Sang-hyeon, Kim Whanki enjoyed a comfortable upbringing in Eupdong-ri, Kijwado, Anjwa-myeon, Sinan County, Zenranan-dō, Korea, then under Japanese rule. After completing elementary school, he moved to Seoul to live with his older sister and attended Choongdong Middle School. With support from his family, he studied abroad in Tokyo at Nishikishiro Middle School. During his five years there, he learned to play the violin. Returning to Korea in 1932, he found his father opposed to his continued studies and faced an arranged marriage.
He is also the great-uncle of Choi Seung-hyeon (b. 1987), better known as T.O.P from the K-pop group Big Bang.
ALL IMAGES HERE UNDER ARE MAGNIFIABLE
Tokyo, 1932–1937
At 20, Kim defied his father’s wishes and sailed to Japan to pursue art. In 1933, he enrolled in a three-year program at Nihon University’s Department of Arts. During his second year, he joined the Avant-Garde Western Painting Institute, led by Japanese artists, and studied under Togo Seiji and Tsuguharu Foujita. In 1935, Kim made his artistic debut by winning a prize at the Second Section Association (Nikakai) for his painting When the Skylarks Sing . This piece features a woman in traditional Korean clothing rendered with simplified, geometric forms. The see-through basket on her head reflects Kim’s growing interest in abstraction, which is also evident in works like House (1936) and Sauce Jar Terrace (1936). He frequently incorporated Korean architectural elements—wooden gates, paper doors, stone walls, staircases, and ceramics—to explore order and repetition, gradually moving toward pure abstraction.
Kim participated in various Japanese artist collectives, including the Hakujitsu Society, Kofu Society (Kofukai), Free Artists’ Association, Room Nine Society (Kyushitsukai), and Hakuban Society. He continued to submit works to the Free Artists’ Association until 1941, including Rondo (1938). The Korean government later designated Rondo as a Registered Cultural Property (No. 535) in 2013, recognizing it as an early instance of abstract art in Korea [9]: 24.
He spent one more year in Japan as an assistant before returning to Korea in 1937. His time in Tokyo solidified his identity as an abstract artist, drawing particular influence from Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso [11]. Works such as Rondo, Aria, and White Seagull (1937–1938) show a marked shift toward pure abstraction, incorporating geometric circles, ovals, and intersecting squares.
Untitled
Cubism influenced Kim Whanki’s early experiments with geometric abstraction. His breakthrough work, When Skylarks Sing (1935), depicts a woman carrying a basket on her head. Various geometric shapes—such as the background building that plays with light and shadow—add depth to the piece. While the figure of a traditionally dressed Korean woman is rendered realistically, her environment is ambiguous. Kim omits detailed facial features and bodily details, underscoring his distinctive perspective on colonial-era Korea under Japanese rule.
Seoul, 1938–1951
After returning from Tokyo, Kim associated with Korean writers and developed a strong interest in traditional Korean art. By 1940, the Free Artists Exhibition had changed its name to the Creative Artists Association, largely due to wartime constraints that stifled more radical creativity. Before leaving the group in 1941, Kim submitted six works to its exhibitions, including Island Tale, Still Life, Landscape 1, Landscape 2, Landscape at Atami, and Chamber Music.
In 1944, Kim married writer Byun Dong-rim (art name Hyang-an, 1916–2004), who had previously been married to poet Yi Sang. They wed against both families’ wishes and lived together until Byun’s death. Around this time, Kim also adopted the artist name Su-hwa.
In 1945, Korea was liberated from Japanese colonial rule, and in 1948, Kim joined Yoo Youngkuk and Lee Kyusang, 1918–1967) to form the New Realism Group. This collective was among the most influential in modern Korean art, pioneering abstract styles that sought a “new formation of reality” beyond the direct legacy of Japanese art and Cold War ideological divides: 63-64.
In 1949, Kim submitted Jar and Flowers to the New Realism Group’s second exhibition. This work, featuring an abstracted white porcelain jar, exemplifies his fascination with Korean ceramics—a motif he employed to unite tradition and modernity. Kim later wrote that Korean jars served as his aesthetic and cultural compass, acting as a kind of textbook.
Between 1942 and 1950, Kim’s submissions to exhibitions reflected his continued interest in nature and everyday life. Woods, for instance, demonstrates his ambition to distill his surroundings into a purely composed form.
Busan, 1951–1953
When the Korean War broke out, large numbers of refugees and the South Korean government relocated to Busan. Kim also fled Seoul and spent three years in a refugee camp there. Despite the hardships, he continued to paint. During this period, he produced works such as Refugee Train (1951), Landscape at Chin-hae, Shanty, and Jars and Women (1951).
His 1951 oil painting An Evacuation Train exemplifies his somewhat detached portrayal of the war, showing refugees crammed into train compartments in a style that is brighter and more cartoonish than the somber realism many other artists used at the time. The United States Information Service (USIS) actively promoted American abstract art in Korea, which provided Korean artists like Kim access to new ideas through paid subscriptions to international art publications. This USIS support was partly intended to counteract the North Korean preference for socialist realism. As a result, artists in the South, including Kim, explored abstraction more openly—standing in contrast to the forced Stalinist or Kim Il Sung imagery in the North.
Seoul, 1953–1956
Returning to Seoul in 1953, Kim became increasingly captivated by the jar motif. Paintings like Jar and Poetry, White Jar and Woman, Jar, and Jar and Plum Blossoms all revolve around this subject. During this period, he taught at Hongik University’s College of Fine Arts, staged a solo exhibition at the USIS Gallery, and was elected to the Korean Academy.
Paris, 1956–1959
Kim had long aspired to work in Paris, as suggested by his personal writings. From 1954 onward, several Korean artists—Nam Kwan, Kim Heung-su, and Kim Chong-ha—began traveling there. For many, Paris was the epicenter of modern art and a means to overcome lingering feelings of inferiority that had developed under the Japanese-dominated education system. Though some artists radically changed their style upon encountering European art, Kim chose to retain core aspects of his own aesthetic, continuing to feature jars, birds, mountains, deer, and plum blossoms.
He traveled extensively, seeking new techniques and integrating them into his work, but he also aimed for a seamless fusion of Eastern and Western aesthetics. Kim felt weary of criticisms that either accused him of deviating from Korean artistic values or saw him as merely imitating Western styles. To reconcile these tensions, he used Joseon Dynasty pottery—particularly buncheong or the well-known “Moon Jar”—as a symbol of blending tradition with modernity. During his time in Paris, his color palette shifted to predominantly blue tones, reminiscent of glazed ceramics, and he introduced motifs such as moons, mountains, and plum blossoms into his paintings.
In Jar (1958), Kim transitioned from using dispersed, flat brushstrokes to more layered, textured approaches. By removing visual references to scale, he gave the jar a monumental, zoomed-in presence. Inspired by stained-glass effects—similar to Georges Rouault’s work—Kim sought to replicate the tactile quality of buncheong pottery on a two-dimensional canvas.
Seoul, 1959–1963
When Kim returned to Seoul in 1959, he was quickly appointed Dean of the Faculty at Hongik University’s College of Fine Arts and later became President of Hongik Art College in 1960. Administrative and teaching responsibilities left him with limited time for painting, and he often felt frustrated by institutional politics and the gap between his aspirations and reality.
New York, 1963–1974
In 1963, Kim served as Korea’s commissioner at the São Paulo Biennial, presenting the work of seven Korean artists: Young-ju Kim (1920–1995), Yoo Youngkuk, Kim Ki-chang, Suh Se-ok, Han Yong-jin (1934–1966), and Yoo Gang-yeol (1920–1976).
“The Korean section [at the Biennial] was well-received. I felt my own painting was also successful, and it strengthened my belief that my art carried significance. … There’s a distinctive beauty in my work, one that springs from my experiences in the Korean countryside.”
After the Biennial, Kim moved to New York—then the new epicenter of modern art—in 1963. His wife, Hyang-an, joined him the following year. With support from the Asia Society (funded by John D. Rockefeller III), they settled in a studio on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, forming friendships with Korean and American artists such as Po Kim, John Pai (1937– ), Nam June Paik, Adolph Gottlieb, and Mark Rothko [16]: 151.
Once in New York, Kim experimented with using newspaper as a surface for his oil paintings, intrigued by how oil interacted with the paper’s own oils. This technique, which he called “paper-mache,” produced a dynamic effect on the surface. His 1968 paper sculpture Daejup exemplifies this synthesis, showing symmetrical dotted lines reminiscent of Joseon-era pottery’s organic feel. Kim took pride in maintaining a sense of “Koreanness” despite adopting new methods and materials abroad. Freed from social obligations, he concentrated fully on his art—an opportunity not as readily available to his peers who remained in Korea.
During his New York period, Kim became especially known for his “all-over canvas dot paintings.”. Starting around 1970, he applied oil paint diluted with turpentine directly onto unprimed canvas, creating slightly irregular dots. One of his most famous works from this phase is Where, in What Form, Shall We Meet Again?—titled after a poem by Kim Gwang-Seop (1905–1977), a friend of Kim’s. Despite being highly abstract and geometric, the painting’s subtle palette and watery brushstrokes evoke the soft blur of East Asian ink-wash techniques. This approach earned him the Grand Prize at the inaugural Korean Art Grand Award Exhibition.
By 1971, Kim began using a predominantly blue color scheme, arranging dots in circular or curved configurations, as in Universe 05-IV-71. In New York, these works were well-received, and Kim showcased them in annual solo exhibitions at the Poindexter Gallery until his death in 1974.
The late 1960s marked the rise of Dansaekhwa, or Korean monochrome painting, which emphasized the physicality of materials and sought to unify body and mind. In contrast to Western “all-at-once” abstraction, Kim’s repetitive dot compositions implied a sense of movement and time. A notable example is his 1971 piece Universe, which arranges dots in pulsating patterns, evoking waves or cosmic energy. Though the works in his final years became more focused on universal or cosmic themes, the palette often shifted to the gray-blue or “Whanki Blue” range, suggesting a more subdued tone compared to his earlier, more vivid paintings. In 2022, one of his dot paintings, 05-IV-71, achieved a record auction price for a Korean artwork, selling for HK$102 million (US$13.03 million), surpassing its estimated range of HK$48–62 million.
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