The High Museum in Atlanta is organizing the first American museum exhibition featuring the work of Kim Chong Hak (born 1937, Sinuiju, Korea), a master painter from South Korea renowned as “the painter of Mount Seorak”—the highest peak in the country’s Taebaek mountain range. This exhibition will showcase more than seventy works, including new acquisitions from the High’s collection, and will represent the arc of Kim’s mature career while offering a glimpse into an aspect of Korean art from the late twentieth century that is little known outside of South Korea.
Initially working as an abstract painter in the 1960s, Kim ultimately distanced himself from Western-style abstraction, which he perceived as a reaction to national melancholy stemming from decades of hardship and deprivation. By the late 1970s, he had settled in Gangwon Province, southeastern South Korea, near Mount Seorak. There, he sought an alternative artistic narrative, moving away from the monochromatic painting that was prevalent in Korea at that time and embracing a more expressive style. Kim has devoted his life and work to interpreting the landscapes of Mount Seorak, cultivating an artistic and emotional connection to the natural world through decades of self-imposed isolation in the mountains.
His artwork not only reaffirms the expressive power of mountain imagery in traditional East Asian art but also reflects the influence of international movements from the 1970s and 1980s, such as neo-expressionism and various forms of figurative painting.
After its debut at the High Museum, this exhibition will travel nationally.
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