Biography

Park Seo-Bo is a seminal figure in Korean contemporary art and one of the founding members of the Dansaekhwa monochrome movement, a synthesis between traditional Korean spirit and Western abstraction, which emerged in the early 1970s in postwar Korea and has gained international recognition since. Although the Korean monochrome movement has never been defined with a manifesto, the artists affiliated with Dansaekhwa, including Chung Chang-Sup and Lee Ufan, are commonly known for their use of a neutral palette (namely white, beige, and black), their material emphasis on pictorial components and fabrics, and their gestural and systematic process. In Park Seo-Bo’s paintings, process and discipline prevail—a departure from the artist’s early aesthetics, which were inspired by art informal, a French movement that arose parallel to American abstract expressionism during World War II and became prevalent in Europe throughout the 1950s. As early as 1957, he helped establish the Hyun-Dae Artists Association around the principles of art informel, the gestural and abstract techniques of which, like those of action painting and color-field in the United States, would enable young Korean artists to express their anguish in the immediate aftermath of the Korean War. In 1961, Park Seo-Bo earned a UNESCO scholarship and ended up spending a year in Paris, where he furthered his knowledge of art informal. The influence of art informal in his early works can be seen in his series Primordialis, made in the early 1960s, which is characterized by aggressive brushstrokes, dark hues, and amorphous forms. However, by the mid-1960s, the artist had rejected the occidental approach and started devoting his time to learning about oriental philosophy.