These paintings were produced by Min Joung-Ki and were inspired by the stone statues of twelve Earthly Branches on the railing of Geunjeongjeon Hall of Gyeongbokgung Palace. The artist stated that he had the idea plan to paint this work one day and made it into a sehwa (painting for a New Year) for Choi Min, who was not feeling well at the time. Sehwa is a painting for the purpose of delivering New Year’s greetings and blessings, and a total of 11 pieces were directly delivered to Choi Min, one each year, with the last one delivered to the bereaved family of Choi after his death. Although they are oil paintings, they portray twelve Earthly Branches transparently finished as if they were overlaid with light watercolor paint. They are depicted in simple and crude forms like a folk painting, or through strong lines, echoing the dark outline of woodblock prints, depending on the year.
Min Joung-Ki (1949- ) graduated from the Department of Painting at the College of Fine Arts, Seoul National University in 1972. He held solo exhibitions including 《The Exhibition of People, Glorious Spirits》 (Seoul Art Center, Seoul, 1983), 《From Yanggeun to Odae Mountain》 (Garam Art Gallery, Insa Gallery, Seoul, 1996), 《Min Joung-Ki-WalkScape》 (Marronnier Art Center, Seoul, 2004), 《Min Joung-Ki》 (Kumho Museum of Art, Seoul, 2016), and 《Min Joung-Ki》 (Kukje Gallery, Seoul, 2019). He participated in various group exhibitions such as 《Reality and Utterance Group Member’s Exhibition》(1980-1986), 《The 15 Years of Korean Minjoong Arts: 1980-1994》 (National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art [MMCA], Gwacheon, 1994), 《Gyeonggi, National Highway No.1》 (Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, Ansan, 2007), 《Korean Avant-garde Drawing》 (Seoul Olympic Museum of Art, Seoul, 2010), 《Land of Happiness》 (Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, 2016), and 《SEONG: Fantastic City》 (Suwon Ipark Museum of Art, Suwon, 2019). He won the Lee Joong Sup Award hosted by Chosun Ilbo in 2006.
Min Joung-Ki paints the big and small stories of people in landscapes. When he was a member of Reality and Utterance (Hyunsil-gwa Baleun) in the 1980s, he linked these stories to social and political issues. The entire oeuvre of his work, often labeled as kitsch due to their popular and secular characteristics, dealt with the stories of ordinary people. The artist, who focused on the social system and the margins of everyday life in the 1980s, later moved to Yangpyeong, Gyeonggi-do and began to present a series of ancient map-style landscape works. He traveled to villages in each region to learn local history and information through the native population and constructed the vivid image of a village based on his research of oral history. Therefore, rather than reproducing the actual scenery realistically, his works portrayed the appearance of the land and humans living together. By doing so, he created unique art that did not remain in the normative style of map or landscape painting.
