Min Kyung-kap (b. 1933), also known under the penname Yusan, entered the College of Fine Arts at Seoul National University in 1953 during the Korean War and graduated in 1957. He is among the first-generation of Korean painters who majored in Oriental painting, not coming from an art institute or an artist tutelage background. Min won the Special Selection Award in the 5th, 10th, 11th, and 13th National Art Exhibition of the Republic of Korea and served as an invited artist and judge of the National Art Exhibition from 1972 to 1979. Min served on the faculty at Yeungnam University, Dongduk Women’s University, and Wonkwang University, and currently serves as the Chair professor at Dankook University. Min was the recipient of the Korea Culture and Art Award in 1996, Seoul Art Award in 2001, Silver Crown Order of Cultural Merit in 2002, and Grand Prize at the Proud Korean Award in 2007. He was elected as a member of the National Academy of Arts of the Republic of Korea in 2000.
Min Kyung-kap strived for the modernization of Korean painting through harmonizing tradition and modernity, and attempted to change Korean painting through various forms of experimentation. Min’s oeuvre can be divided roughly into six major phases on a chronological scale. The first phase, the period from the late 1950s to the 1960s, during which Min produced Korean abstract paintings that expressed intense emotions and overcame the conventional styles of Korean paintings, was influenced by the then-popular Informel style and abstract expressionism. The second phase was from the 1970s to the early 1990s, during which he established his own style by expressing various subject matter including landscapes, portraits, flowers, and birds using different techniques such as watercolor coloration, returning to the traditional style of Korean painting. The third phase was the mid-to-late 1990s, during which Min expressed objects in nature such as mountains through simplified composition and emphasized the contemplation of the void. The fourth phase is the period from 2000 to 2003, during which Min delved into the theme of “Koreanness,” expressing Korea’s identity through simplified formative elements such as dots, lines, and planes, and primary color tones. The fifth phase was from 2003 to 2009, when he expressed the order of nature as “being nature” based on the ideology of Taoism. In the sixth phase starting from the 2010 to the present, Min has endeavored to express the laws of nature in a world where human beings, all objects, and nature are inextricably intertwined.
