Kim was born on an island in the East China Sea off the southwest coast of the Korean Peninsula. Like many of the aspiring young Korean artists of the day, he traveled to Japan to study Western-style painting. He participated in the Free Artists’ Association, established in Japan soon after his return to Korea in 1937, and continued to exhibit works in Japan. Kim’s works from around this period present Korean objects as motifs in abstracted landscapes and geometrically deformed still lifes, with his relatively lushly brushed works exuding a lyrical mood.

After World War II, Kim became a professor at a Korean art university, where he mentored the following generation, including Yun Hyong-Keun, who was at the time his student and later became his son-in-law. Amidst his growing renown in South Korea, in 1956 he traveled to France, spending four years there, displaying his works throughout Europe. In 1963, he was one of the Korean representatives at the 7th Bienal de São Paolo. The following year he moved to New York, which remained his base for the rest of his life.

Kim trained in Western painting in Japan and then positioned himself in the midst of the Western abstract movement. He created this work in the dot painting technique, a method he arrived at with the aim of creating a uniquely Korean form of abstract painting. He applied dots of thinned blue oil pigment across the entire canvas and circled them with lines, in a production method that can be called a means of seeking the truth. The composition thus simultaneously reveals both intimate detail and universal expanse.

Born in Seoul, Lee studied Western-style painting in Japan from 1940 to 1944. He travelled to Europe in the 1950s and spent time in Paris during the height of the Informel movement. He was thus one of the few Korean artists who was able to experience the Informel activities first-hand.

Moving in tandem with 20th century modernism, Lee’s work shifted from the representational to the non-representational to the abstract as he aimed for a fusion of Western aesthetics and Korean traditions. His early period paintings depict Korean traditional motifs in representational form, and eventually he shifted to abstract works based on the five essential colours of Korea, namely a base tone of off-white or grey combined with the red, yellow, blue and black. In these works, he created a lyric realm that balanced sentiment and intellect.

Lee, conversant with circumstances in Japan and Europe, played a role in conveying the movements of each country to artists in Korea. This meant that many Korean artists had their first contact with Informel via Lee. Active as an artist, exhibition planner and exhibition artist selector, Lee made valuable contributions to critiquing and advancement of the art of his period.

Kwon specialised in Asian painting while in university. His attendance at Western-style painting classes as a student and other experimental activities characterised his early period. His highly abstracted ink paintings, with subjects boldly omitted, received honourable mentions in Korea’s National Exhibition in 1959. He went on to be a judge for that competition and was active as a member of the Korean painting world. Kwon also briefly participated in Mungminhoe (the Ink Forest Group), an avant-garde ink painting society founded by his classmate Suh Se-Ok.

Advancing a stage beyond ink painting created with the simple materials of ink and paper, Kwon confronted the material of paper itself. In his solo exhibition held in Seoul in 1966, he cut holes in paintings, pasted on other bits, pushed through from the back surface, all works composed without the use of ink. In 1975, he was one of the artists included in the early exhibition considering the monochrome in Korean abstract painting, Korea: Five Artists, Five Hinsek (White), Tokyo Gallery, thus expanding his display locations to Japan.

Kwon’s paintings, not dependent on colour, create through light and shadow, challenging the ground/image painting construct itself. His works can be seen as a fusion of the artist’s act, using his hands to elevate the materials’ internal powers, with a spirit based on the East Asian view of nature that accepts things as is.

Chung studied Western-style painting, and in his early period produced abstract paintings influenced by Informel, an important postwar art style. In the 1970s he turned to creating works in which he pasted traditional Korean paper onto canvas. Korean paper then remained an important material in his works over the next forty years until his death.

In the 1980s, he began his Tak series, which represented one aspect of the development of monochrome paintings, and then in the 1990s he created his Meditation series. All of these works involved soaking Korean paper in water, separating their fibres, and then spreading those fibres onto the canvas and fixing them there. Korean paper, like Japanese paper, is used not only for writing and painting, but for such everyday purposes as paper screen doors. Thus, it is a material indispensable to Korean traditional lifestyles. Through this mulberry bark paper – both part of everyday life and symbolic of the Korean people -- Chung aimed for unification of the thing and the self, a borderland that surpasses intention and act.

“Paint without painting, make without making – basically, that is my hope.” These words in the artist’s notebooks indicate that Chung’s works seek a ground plane that harmonises the spiritual and the material, and indeed, they can be considered the path he took to get there.

While the second half of the 20th century Korea was both a turbulent time and a difficult environment for many artists, the first half of Yun’s life was even more challenging still. The Korean War broke out while he was a student in the Art Department of Seoul University, and his studies were interrupted by imprisonment for anti-establishment activities. Through the help of Kim Whanki, who would later become his father-in-law, he was able to enter Hongik University, where Kim taught, in 1959, restarting his education interrupted more than seven years prior.

He first displayed a work titled Umber-Blue in 1973, and as its title implies, it is painted in deep brown and blue pigments. Yun used these colours throughout his life, saying that they encapsulate the places where all things exist, they are the colours of the earth, sky and water. While his early period works included numerous vertical lines, they gradually joined into thick lines, and then planes. The thin, watered down pigments soak into the canvas prepared with almost no ground layers. As if to erase traces of the artist’s hand, their spreading across the picture plane reveals a sense of the artist’s unwavering will, seeking the roots of painting.

While debuting late as an artist, Yun’s works were immediately recognised, and he became one of the artists displaying works in many of the important exhibitions raising international awareness of monochrome painting. In Japan, he displayed works in the Korea: Facet of Contemporary Art (Tokyo Central Museum of Art) exhibition in 1977, and held solo shows at Muramatsu Gallery and Tokyo Gallery, two galleries who were early introducers of Korean abstract art.

The majority of Dansaekhwa artists worked in Korea, and then broadcast their ideas to Japan and the world. Conversely, Chung is one of its important artists who works overseas. After graduating from university in Korea, Chung travelled to Paris in 1967, and then in 1969 moved to Kobe, Japan. In 1977, he set out again for Paris, living overseas for a long period until his return to Korea in 1990.

Like the other Dansaekhwa artists, Chung’s early works were polychrome abstract paintings influenced by the Informel movement. With the arrival of the 1970s, the colour disappeared and he began to create the work style that became a synonym for this artist, namely imbedding only white pigment into grids on the painting surface. This painting was created by this unique method. After coating the entire canvas surface with paint, he would remove the canvas from the stretchers as the pigment dried, and create cracks in the pigment by folding along pencil-drawn lines on the back of the canvas. Spreading out the canvas again, stretching it on the stretchers, he would then peel the pigment from the cracked areas before filling them with pigment again, repeating this peeling and filling process over and over again. He then created works in this style using colourless black or the traditional Korean colour blue. These canvases that took massive amounts of time and effort to create, use the repetitive process characteristic of monochrome paintings to create a spiritually tinged, noble visual experience.

Ha studied Western-style painting and in his early period worked within the flow of Informel and geometric abstraction. Then his interest turned towards material quality and its relativity, creating three-dimensional works and installations that closely harmonised with those of the Japanese Mono-ha artists of the same period. During this period, he led A.G. (Avant Garde), a short-lived avant-garde group that nonetheless was influential in the Korean art world.

Ha displayed his first work using the Conjunction title in 1974. Applying great force, he pushed oil pigments into the back of roughly woven linen, with the pigments pushing through the cloth weave to appear on the front surface. This unique method not only disrupts the relationship between support material and medium, planar and three dimensional, it also reconsiders the relationship between expression and non-expression.

Ha’s works titled Conjunction not only show the indivisible unification of the paint and linen materials, they also make us question the premise of the subjective/objective duality of things/objects. Perhaps they can also be said to display the Asian duality of contradiction/opposition with reception/fusion.

Lee was a mainstay of the Mono-ha movement of the 1960s through mid-1970s, and was also a major artist in 1970s Korean monochrome painting. Lee is also known for his central role in introducing Korean artists to Japan.

After one year in the Art Department of Seoul National University, Lee moved to Japan and transferred to the Department of Philosophy at Nihon University. Using Japan as his base from then on, he has played a leading role in art world interchange between the two countries. In addition to his artistic production, Lee also wrote articles about Japanese art trends for Korean magazines, and these articles became an important information source for Korean artists. In 1968, Lee’s work was included in the Korean Contemporary Painting exhibition held at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, the first full scale exhibition of Korean contemporary art held in Japan in the postwar era. He also became acquainted with Park Seo-Bo, another artist included in the exhibition.

In 1973, he displayed his From Point and From Line series at Tokyo Gallery. As if returning to the calligraphy practice he continued throughout his childhood in Korea, he repeatedly moved his pigment-loaded brush, with each blur-accompanied dot or line left as imprint of his second-by-second movements. In his 1980s series From Winds and With Winds, Lee shifted to more generous strokes, with an irregular rhythm to their repetition, thus creating a dynamic space through the back and forth between blank canvas and stroke.

Suh graduated from university in 1964, participated in the avant-garde group A.G. (Avant Garde) after its founding in 1969, and was active as a member until its disbanding in 1974. Like Choi Myoung-Young, a noteworthy early activity was the introduction he received in the 1975 exhibition titled Korea: Five Artists, Five Hinsek (White). The work from this period, which had already gained the Simultaneity title, has a decomposed geometric, three-dimensional form, reminiscent of an axiomatic architectural drawing, set against the white picture plane. These works are equipped with a distinctive intellectual rigour that distinguishes them from those displayed by the older artists Kwon Young-Woo and Park Seo-Bo at the same time, each revealing craft-like handling born from repeated actions.

Suh’s style later changed, and he went through a period of using rough brushstrokes to create geometric forms that filled the canvas. In the latter half of the 1990s, his outlines dissolved and he juxtaposed or overlapped light toned colour planes to arrive at a calm painting surface. Liberated from strict geometry, festive, gentle-light filled painting spaces hint at the world outside the composition as they expand outward from the canvas.

Kim Tae-Ho was active from a young age, winning various prizes while still a university student. At first he used spray paint to create geometrical abstract paintings on a smooth surface, but then he turned to a period of creating woodcuts. At the end of the 1980s he began to attach sections of Korean paper to his canvas and then layer pigments on top of them, to create paintings with dense matière. With the beginning of the 1990s, he shifted to works using only set pigments applied as-is in rhythmical brush movements. The work displayed here is from that period.

Kim’s works continued to develop, and today he continues to work on his Internal Rhythm series. In these paintings he covers the entire canvas surface with many layers of pigments, and then uses a knife to “excavate”, scraping away at the surface to reveal the lower level pigments.

With changes in his style through each succeeding period, his works consistently show a focus on the material quality of the painting surface, and the artisan-like techniques used to achieve that surface. Kim’s works with these characteristics reveal an East Asian spirituality born from religious practices, a feature shared with the artists of the previous generation.

Born and raised in Seoul, Choi graduated from a university in Korea and then entered the Technique and Material Course at the National University of Fine Arts and Music (present-day Tokyo University of the Arts) in Tokyo. Choi has continued to base herself in Japan since graduation. After exhibiting in the Women Artists Association exhibitions, Ryoyo-no-me, and the Vision of Contemporary Art exhibitions, in 1997 she travelled to Paris. There she spent several years painting and displaying her works.

Choi’s Beyond the Colours series begun in 1990, as indicated by its title, acquires a breadth and depth into which the viewer wants to leap wholeheartedly and swim amidst the colours. These picture planes with their colours obtained from the earth, water and sky all seem to share a moist atmosphere that is good for human life. Looking closely, you can see the rich texture made up of layering of various techniques, such as puddling, oozing or scraping the pigments. All contribute a sense of quiet movement and spatial feel to the surface.

After graduating from the Art Department of Seoul University in 1980, Lee pursued both a Masters and a Ph.D. at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. While a student Lee held solo exhibitions at galleries in Japan. His Nine Mirrors of Painting series was created during this period. These works with deep blue pigment soaking into Japanese paper are reminiscent of the processes used in glazed ceramics and shibori-dyed cloth. Lee’s works are characterised by the grasp of the special features of his materials and their subtle control, and an active inclusion of chance in his process.

Lee began the Epistémè of Painting series in the early 1990s and continues work on them today. The term épistémè is Greek-derived and a philosophical concept heralded by Michel Foucault. This series given that name reveals the artist’s stance of questioning all aspects of the true nature of painting, and here too a restrained blue blurring continually appears. In recent works Lee has continued the colour fields right up to the edge of the sides of the canvas in a thickness unusual for painting. In this manner, and also in other ways, he continues to engage with the problem of the frontality of paintings.

Yoon was born and raised in Japan and today continues to base his work in Tokyo. In his works he seeks to activate the viewer’s awareness of the connection between the work and the space in which it is placed. Working seamlessly in both planar and three-dimensional forms, throughout Yoon’s works are characterised by their use of soil. In the Something series, he gathers soil and fires it to a high temperature to produce tiny shavings of ceramic material, before then combining shavings with nikawa (animal glue) to make the pigment for his painting. These works continue on the theme found in his preceding Stand it By series, “going and coming effortlessly between existence and nothingness”.

In his pale coloured canvases that invariably appear taciturn, the imagery’s appearance changes as the natural light shining in from a window shifts, surprising with an unexpected loquacity. The recent Sand River Works series uses sand gathered from rivers as its material. The special sand quality, blended from different sand types gathered at upstream locations and carried across national borders and other boundaries, can be linked to our own personal culture that we create from the formation of the cities we live in, the resulting shifting gathering of people, things and information. By selecting soil and sand, two things we can easily forget as everyday items outside our awareness, the careful selection and making use of these things as art materials reveals the potential found in the as yet unseen true nature of the everyday things around us.