Dansaekhwa: Korean Abstract Art and its Cultural Impact

This fascinating book explores the major abstract art movement in postwar South Korea, celebrating its aesthetic legacy as well as the individual endeavors by many of its canon-defining artists.

Although most commonly referred to as Dansaekhwa ( monochrome painting ), the movement in fact contained a diverse group of artists who pushed the boundaries of painting and color outside the canvas into fields that included drawing, craft, sculpture, installation, and conceptual and experimental art.

Authored by Dr. Yeon Shim Chung, an expert in modern and contemporary Korean art history, this comprehensive volume presents critical explorations of significant Dansaekhwa artists, including Park Seo-Bo, Lee Ufan, Ha Chong-Hyun, Kim Tschang-Yeul, and Yun Hyong-keun, detailing their aesthetic developments and experiments within the wider cultural climate of postwar South Korea and the international art world at large.

Despite their different approaches, Dansaekhwa artists were all agents of creative and social change, working to develop distinctly Korean notions of formalism, materiality, and monumentalism within new global ideas of painting during the midtwentieth century. This book also examines how the movement crystallized through influence of art critics within and outside of Korea, such as Lee Yil, Oh Kwang Su, and Nakahara Yusuke and a final chapter provocatively asks, in the tradition of the art historian, Linda Nochlin, why have there been no great women Dansaekhwa artists? , revealing that artists such as Chin Ohc Sun, Lee Chungji, and Yoon Miran were influential in the mostly male-dominated world of abstract painting at that time.

The first book on Dansaekhwa to survey both established figures and its pioneering women artists, this is an essential guide to understanding Korean abstract art and its international influence.