Kim Chong Hak: Painter of Seoraksan

Flouting the postmodern trends of 1960s South Korea, Kim's Mount Seorak landscapes mark a poignant return to figuration

Published with High Museum of Art.

Since debuting his mature style in 1984, Kim Chong Hak (born 1937) has become one of the most widely recognized artists in South Korea. Known as the "Painter of Seoraksan," Kim has a relationship with Mount Seorak that is as essential to the history of Korean contemporary art as Cezanne's depictions of Mont Sainte-Victoire are in Western art history. Like many others in the postwar generation, Kim found himself grappling with questions of identity and persistent cultural memories within a deeply embedded colonial consciousness. Rejecting abstraction, he relocated to Gangwon Province, where his views of Seorak in the Taebaek Mountains encouraged the expressive figurative style for which he is known. Thus, Kim Chong Hak: Painter of Seoraksan is both the record of a generation's cultural reclamation and a reflection on the joys, sorrows, pain and fulfillment of coming into one's own language as an artist.