SEOUL, Oct. 14 (Yonhap) -- Park Seo-bo, a renowned master of Korean monochrome painting, known as "dansaekhwa," died Saturday due to lung cancer. He was 92.
Park is one of the founding members of the Dansaekhwa movement, which emerged in the early 1970s in South Korea and has since gained international recognition.
Born in Yecheon, North Gyeongsang Province, in 1931, Park graduated from Hongik University in Seoul and opened an art studio to begin his artistic career.
Inspired by his son's scribbles, he began the "Ecriture" series in 1967 by repeating pencil lines over a wet monochromatic painted surface.
Later, he used traditional Korean paper, hanji, to create repetitive lines on large canvases.
In the 2000s, his style evolved further, moving beyond monochrome into bright and vibrant colors.
His works ranked third in terms of accumulative sales per artist at local domestic art auctions last year, a testament to his enduring influence and popularity.
His paintings were created through the process of repetitive actions of pasting, scraping, scratching and rubbing. In past interviews, Park said his works balance drawing and painting in a quest for emptiness through reduction.
Park has held a number of solo exhibitions at home and abroad, and his works are owned by renowned museums and galleries, including the Museum of Modern Art and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, The Art Institute of Chicago, The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo and Hong Kong's M+ museum, among others.
In 2021, Park's red painting was turned into one of Louis Vuitton's iconic Capucines bags, making him the first Korean artist to collaborate with the French luxury brand for a bag project.
A museum named after him has been under construction on the southern resort island of Jeju, which is expected to open next year.
In February, Park revealed he had been diagnosed with stage 3 lung cancer, but he continued to paint with different methods, like drawing on newspapers with pencils and oil painting.
His memorial altar was set up at Seoul National University Hospital.
Source: Yonhap News Agency