The background color of “Delight of Life” (1975) is yellow, and in it, unbound shapes are freely intertwined and blended. These shapes do not refer to specific objects. But through the title, “Delight of Life,” viewers can recognize that Choi visualizes vitality and delight erupting from her inner world.
Wook-kyung Choi (1940-1985) received her bachelor’s degree from the Department of Painting at Seoul National University and moved to the United States where she studied at the Cranbrook Academy of Art. She received her M.F.A. from Brooklyn Museum Art School, currently Pratt Institute’s Education Division. She held numerous solo exhibitions including her first one “Impression of New Mexico” at American Cultural Center in Korea. She also participated in group exhibitions, and her posthumous exhibitions were held in Korea and the United States. She served as a professor at Franklin Pierce University, Yeungnam University, and Duksung Women’s University.
Wook-kyung Choi presented unique color abstract painting. Her works are categorized into three periods. In the 1960s, while studying abroad in the United States, she embraced abstract expressionism, which was the major stream of the American art circle, and created dynamic paintings without specific figures but with impromptu brush strokes and vivid colors. After espousing the Western style, she established her unique visual language in the 1970s. Works from this period, a departure from the wild paintings bursting with energy that characterized her previous phase, reveal rhythmic and organic shapes comprised of curves and bright colors. After returning home in 1978 and until her death, she was inspired by the beauty of nature she felt while traveling around Korea, and expressed it in her paintings. She often used bright pastel colors and depicted strong sun rays and their vitality. During this period, Choi also contemplated on her identity as a woman, visualizing these thoughts in the canvas. As a result, paintings reminiscent of the women’s body or flowers were created. Through her unique sensitivity, these works deliver aspects of femininity such as love and delight. Choi thus wanted to express her emotion in its purest form via visual medium rather than objects explaining something. By pure abstractionism similar to music, she conveyed her agony and solitude as a human being, happiness and joy, and vitality on the canvas.
