Yoo Youngkuk is a pioneering Korean abstract painter. He is also famous for depicting nature in abstract images by using primary colors like red, yellow, green and blue.
The intense colors and abstract images in his paintings are enough to attract people to his art. He is a representative artist, along with Park Seobo, Kim Whanki and Lee Joongseop, who are known as "the legendary artists of Korea".Yoo Youngkuk was born in Uljin-gun (present-day North Gyeongsang-do) in 1916. He first encountered abstract art when he studied art at Tokyo Institute of Culture. At that time, he began to gain an expanded understanding of surrealism and abstraction by interacting with various artists. He also strove to find new artistic techniques that were not bound by existing ways.
Returning to Korea in 1935, he had to run a brewery for a while to earn a living and he found it hard to draw something. However, he restarted drawing because he had a lot of passion for art.
He criticized the art world centered on academic backgrounds at that time and tried to make his own art world. From 1964, he stopped participating in group activities related to art and began to focus on personal artwork.
There are two typical characteristics of his work. First, he mainly simplifies nature such as mountains, the sun, the moon and the sea with dots, lines and shapes. The mountains and the sea he painted were inspired by his hometown Uljin. There is a combination of sharpness and tenderness in his work. His work is a unique abstraction. In particular, the mountain series he painted has been loved greatly by people.
He boldly used primary colors like red, blue, yellow and green in his work. The combination of colors, such as harmony of complementary colors, and depth of color were fascinating. That may be why people call him the ‘Macrosco of Korea’. His way of working with colors is sophisticated and modern. Therefore his work looks as if it were a recent work.
Due to its timelessness, his exhibition is exceptionally popular with and well-attended by younger generations.
Yoo Youngkuk is one of the pioneers of Korean modernism. He held his first solo exhibition in 1964 when he was 48 years old and then he became widely known to people after the age of 60. One curator said, “He is an artist who walked his way silently while he was not bound with the burden of selling his work. He kept producing his own artwork until his death in 2002, even after he developed a cardiac infarction in 1977.” And he highly valued the idea of the spirit of the artist.
He went through harsh times such as Japanese occupation, Korean liberation and the Korean War. During that time, he devoted his life to finding the reason for the artist’s existence and a new artistic practice.
He’s gone now, but his artwork lives and breathes in the people inspired by his work.
“The mountain is not in front of me, it is in me.” Yoo Youngkuk said.
Sayart / Claire_Seo ssjjyy516@gmail.com
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▲Yoo Youngkuk, Mountain, 1974, oil on canvas, 135x135 Collection of Daegu Art Museum |
