January 19, 2021 

Artist Kim Tschang-yeu _ Courtesy of the artist and Gallery Hyundai

Korean painter Kim Tschang-Yeul, who devoted a half century to creating luminous paintings of water drops that are informed by the trauma of war and Eastern philosophy, died at the age of 91 on Jan. 5 in Seoul. The prolific painter is one of the best-known South Korean artists abroad, with his work shown at a number of exhibitions around the globe, including around 60 private exhibitions.

The abstract artist was born in Maengsan, a small town in present-day North Korea, in 1929. After Korea was liberated from Japanese colonial rule in 1945, he moved south and studied under artist Lee Kwae-dae. He entered Seoul National University, majoring in art, in 1949, but his studies were interrupted by the Korean War (1950–1953).

In the mid-1950s, he and like-minded artists led Korea's Art Informel movement, which had started in Europe to pursue abstract expressionism. He formed a group called the Ink Forest Society in 1959 with other artists to explore ways to modernize traditional East Asian ink paintings.  

Departing from pure abstraction, Kim painted Evénement de la nuit (Nighttime Event) (1972), a photo-realistic droplet heavy with potential energy and bright with moonlight on a black background. Kim continued to paint hyperreal droplets—often on abstract or minimalist backgrounds—until his death. “It was spectacular,” he said in a 2016 interview with the Yonhap News Agency. “It was like a symphony. I took pictures of them and started thinking about how to express them on a canvas. Then began my lifelong task.” The artist also mentioned that the transparent water drops is an act of making bad things go away. He finds peace of mind in water drops..

Kim Tschang-yeul Art Museum opened on Jeju Island in 2016, and donated more than 200 works for its collection. It is currently showing the exhibition Media and Waterdrops, a selection of Kim's water drop paintings on newspaper pages.