“Forest” (1984) was created in the early 1980s, when Suh Yongsun began to gain renown in the Korean art circle with his series of pine tree paintings. The leafy, dense pine forest in this work is painted in a green so intense that it might even be dazzling to the eyes. Suh’s color palette was quite unusual, given that it was a period when the mainstream Korean art world was much more reserved in its expression of color as shown in the case of Korean monochromatic Dansaekhwa. His sense of tactility, as bold and rough as the color, is in line with his expressionist tendencies which can be also found in his historical paintings that have created from the mid-1980s and his works portraying modern urban dwellers. Having experienced the rapid urbanization craze firsthand while living in a poor suburban village, Suh aimed to realize the antithesis of such an environment and create a space for self-care by embodying nature in his canvas. For this reason, his pine tree forest can be interpreted as his personal psychological refuge. Suh has created landscape paintings on Mt. Bukhan and Mt. Jiri since 2009 and continues to expand his themes gradually to include nature itself.
Suh Yongsun (b. 1951) studied in the Department of Painting at Seoul National University receiving his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in 1979 and 1982, respectively. In 1978, while still a college student, Suh won the Special Selection Award of the Joongang Fine Arts Prize, organized by JoongAng Ilbo, and the Korean Fine Art Grand Prize, organized by the Hankook Ilbo. Suh has held solo exhibitions at various venues including P&P Gallery in 1988; ARKO Art Center in 1989; Shinsegae Gallery in 1991; Ilmin Museum of Art in 2004; and Gallery Fukuzumi, Osaka, in 2014. He was selected as Artist of the Year by the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, currently MMCA, in 2009, and subsequently held a large solo exhibition at the museum. He has also participated in various group exhibitions including the “1985 Young Artists Exhibition” at the National Museum of Modern and
Contemporary Art, currently MMCA, in 1985; the “19th Cannes International Painting Festival” in 1987; “Seoul Art Grand Exhibition” at Seoul Museum of Art in 1996; and “Drawing Cheoram by Seven Artists” at Taebaek Coal Museum in 2002. After serving on the faculty of the Department of Painting at Seoul National University from 1979 to 2008, he is now dedicated to
artistic creation full-time as a painter.
In the early 1980s, Suh produced his “Pine Tree” series. From the mid-1980s, his interests shifted from nature to history and urban dwellers, prompting him to create historical painting series and urban dweller series which portray oppressed people in agony as they face tumultuous historical events. These paintings vividly capture the anxiety of his contemporaries, who were marginalized in the midst of rapid urban development. In his representative historical paintings, “Maewoldang of Six Martyred Ministers” (1992) and “Exterminations of the Families of Six Martyred Ministers” (1996), the tumult between the loyalists of King Danjong and the reformists who yearned to remake the world is depicted in an expressionist style, presenting the painter’s subjective interpretation of historical facts. At a time when the Korean art scene strongly favored subdued color palettes, the painter intentionally employed expressionistic techniques, which emphasize vivid colors and brushstrokes, to capture the inner worlds of city dwellers who are oppressed in urban spaces densely packed with buildings. Starting in 2009, he began to produce landscape paintings of Mt. Bukhan and Mt. Jiri, continuing to create his art while gradually expanding his subject matter to
encompass nature.
