KPC3328-3329: Korean Modern Figures (Painters)

The Korea Post introduces yet another new stamp series featuring premier modern/present-day Painters, Park Sookeun and Chang Ucchin, that capture the sentiment of the Korean people with imaginative works.

Revered as the most Korean of Korean painters, painters Park Sookeun (1914-1965) depicts the fortitude amid the fatigue of everyday life throughout the 1930s and 1960s under a very humble yet gentle mindset. Around the age of twelve, he was taken aback by the artistry of Jean-Francois Millets The Angelus, motivating him to become an artist himself and begin studying on his own, leading up to his first debut as an artist at just eighteen years of age having entered the Joseon Fine Art Exhibition. His philosophy was centered in capturing the kind nature and truth about human existence, which served as the basis for depicting the simple, impoverished lives of people in such a warm light. The granule texture of his paintings that arose following the multiple applications of lines, structure and paint was the characteristic draw of his work. Later in life, despite having lost the vision in his left eye due to development of a cataract at age forty-nine, he kept his passion for the arts alive and was posthumously awarded the Eungwan of the Order of Cultural Merit in 1980. Among his most notable works are A Girl Tending to an Infant (1953), Washerwomen by the Stream (1954), Woman Pounding Grain (1954) and Two Women by a Tree (1962).

Another esteemed artist of the modern/present-day era is painter Chang Ucchin (1917 – 1990), who had a unique approach of his own that was animated yet captured Korean nature in a very compact form. He was awarded the top prize at the 2nd Annual National Student Art Exhibition at twenty-one years of age and was an active member of the Sinsasil-pa (Neo-realism Group) in the 1940s together with Kim Whanki and Lee Jung-seob. After that, he continued producing artworks while working in the arts and sciences department of the National Museum of Korea and as a Seoul National University professor. He remained very faithful to his personal philosophy of paralleling his life and artwork with his view on leading a simple and genuine life. His art typically dealt with topics based on the sun and the moon, trees and sparrows, home and family, children and trees while creating an animated yet simple picture that uniquely depicted coarse line contouring and expressions of color amid a refined, formed structure. Among his most notables works are Crock (1949), Self Portrait (1951), Magpie (1958) and House (1978).