Kim Whanki 1913-1974

gerard van weyenbergh
Jun 3
2 min read

Updated: Jun 9

Kim's work has been showing continuously in the Americas, Europe and East Asia for seven decades, including two special exhibitions at the Sao Paulo Biennale in 1965 and 1977 and retrospectives on the tenth, fifteenth, twentieth, twenty-fifth and thirtieth anniversaries of his death in 1974.

I want, declared Kim in 1968, to move people with my pictures the way music can bring me to tears when I paint. 2-V-73 #313 is its own sublime orchestration.

Sold in Christie's $ 1.5 M in 2011

2-V-73 #313, 1973

Dated, signed and titled on verso 2-V-73 #313 Whanki New York

Oil on canvas

59 x 40in. (150 x 101.5cm.)

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He moved to New York in 1963 direct from the 7th Sao Paulo Biennale, where he represented Korea and won Honorable Mention for painting. Helped by a Rockefeller Foundation grant for one year, he was able to take stock of the city's lively art community. Kim was put off by the commercialism and vapidity he saw in much of American abstract and Pop art, striving to invest his non-narrative work with the emotive power of poetry and music. At the same time in Korea, he was creating a sensation with the work he shipped back, particularly as an artist in his late 50s still breaking new ground. In New York, he was making a name for himself, gradually securing gallery representation and critical support. Kim's fifteenth solo exhibition took place at Asia House Galleries in 1964 and his twenty-first, "100,000 Dots," at Poindexter Gallery in 1973.

Sold in Christie's GBP 360,000 in 2015

17-VII-70 # 183

Signed to the reverse Whanki New York

Titled as above

Painted in 1970

Oil on cotton

88 x 67 cm.

------------ Kim Whan-Ki is widely known as a painter who epitomized the archetype of Korean aesthetics. Kim found a limitless inspiration in the austere and regal beauty from varied Korean motifs. Throughout his lifelong artistic career, Kim devoted himself to capture the poetic emotion and spirit imbued in both the naturalism and the actual nature of Korea. He transformed from the figurative to abstraction during the 1960s. Untitled 8-IIII-71 featured here illustrates that Kim emphasized harmony in colour and pattern, and evoked the flowing charm of Asian ink paintings.

Sold in Christie's HKD 1.6 M in 2020