Park Soo-geun (1914~1965) graduated from ordinary school and studied painting on his own, making his debut as an artist through spectating exhibitions such as the Joseon Art Exhibition and the Korean Art Exhibition (National Exhibition). During the liberation and war, Western abstract art rapidly flowed in and dominated the flowerbeds, but Park Soo-geun consistently maintained his paintings that expressed the daily life of ordinary people with simple compositions and rough textures. Park Soo-geun mainly captured the streetscapes and neighborhoods he saw in his paintings while going back and forth from his Changsin-dong house to Myeong-dong PX and Euljiro’s Bando Gallery. At the same time, he was also interested in the flow of contemporary Western art, refined painting elements such as space, form, texture, and color, and established a modern painting form and method to best express his subject. His paintings with simplified shapes and rough surfaces show Korean and indigenous aesthetics reminiscent of Joseon Dynasty ceramics, shoji paper, earthen walls of thatched houses, and stone carvings of temples. Currently, Park Soo-geun's works are included in 20 domestic art textbooks, so Koreans know Park Soo-geun only through essential education and are familiar with painting. This exhibition of 'Park Soo-geun: A Tree Waiting for Spring' is designed to show Park Soo-geun from a new perspective, which has been limited by such modifiers as 'a faithful painter', 'a painter who loved my neighbor', and 'the artist most loved by Koreans'. It pays attention to the post-war era in which he lived, and looks at the achievements of Park Soo-geun, removing the stereotype that he was a poor artist due to the coldness caused by the factionalism of the flower bed or economic poverty at that time. In addition, based on the data and research results newly discovered through the publication project of Park Soo-geun's previous work conducted by the Arts Management Support Center from 2016 to 2018, Park Soo-geun's activities, which were not well known, are introduced. Beom-mo Yoon, director of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, said, “This is a large-scale exhibition created in collaboration between the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Yanggu and the Park Su-geun Museum of Art, Yanggu, and with the cooperation of the bereaved family, researchers, collectors, and various institutions. I look forward to providing a perspective.”
Reading through Park Soo-geun in the 1950s and 1960s
In the era of Korea, Park Soo-geun, who served as a pre-war clerk and art teacher, painted a portrait at PX in the US military base after the war, where he met novelist Park Wan-seo. The US military base is a place where Park Soo-geun had to abandon his pride as an artist and endure all kinds of shame, but at the same time, it is also a place where he met supporters who cherish his work. (Art in Asia and the West)' (San Francisco Museum of Art, 1957) and 'Contemporary Korean Paintings' (World House Gallery, New York, 1958), along with leading Korean artists, were introduced abroad. Through Park Soo-geun, who calmly expressed the hardships of his neighbors without ignoring the harsh times, this exhibition, which allows you to read the Korean period from 1950 to 1960 after the war, is a 'self-taught', 'post-war (postwar) period' to read the era of Park Soo-geun. Four keywords were suggested: 'flower bed', 'common people', and 'Korean beauty', part 1 'The Boy Who Loved Millet', Part 2 'Exhibitions with the US Army', Part 3 'Changsin-dong People', and Part 4 'Numbers Waiting for Spring' made up of topics.
Part 1, 'The Boy Who Loved Millet' shows the process of growing up as an artist, a boy who wanted to become a great painter like Millet. You can meet his early works, from watercolors in his teenage years to oil paintings in the 1950s. The materials Su-geun Park referenced to study painting, such as art books, art magazines, and picture postcards, show the process of completing his painting style while absorbing various art information. It shows the origins of Park Soo-geun's art. Part 2, 'The US Army and the Exhibition', displays works from the special award-winning works of the 2nd National War, which resumed after the Korean War, to the works he participated in major exhibitions. It also introduces Park Soo-geun's time as an American PX portrait artist and Park Soo-geun's solo exhibition (1962) held in the library of the U.S. Army Base in Yongsan. In particular, in this exhibition, Park Wan-seo's novel <The Tree> as a medium empathizes with the harsh times that Park Soo-geun endured and introduces his representative work <Tree and Two Women> in Part 2.
