The Formation and Development of Korean Abstract Sculpture

It is around the 1950’s when Korea abstract sculpture appeared. Although it is almost 20 years later than when abstract painting was developed in Korea, it is quite interesting that abstract sculpture received such notable awards in the National Art Exhibition from its early years. Kim Chong Yung, who attended Tokyo Art School in modern period(1936~1941), served as a judge of the National Art Exhibition, and a former professor at Seoul National University after liberation took the lead in Korean abstract sculpture. Therefore, abstract sculpture was not formed along with the conflict composition such as ‘established and rising,’ ‘National Art Exhibition and non-official Exhibitions,’ ‘conservatism and the avant-garde,’ which are commonly discussed in modern Korean art history. The forms of abstraction varied every period, but the series of the movement corresponds with the painting to a certain degree. However, abstract sculpture was affected by its medium more than that of painting. Especially in the 1970’s, a boundary of the field in sculpture fell apart as the genres like object art and installation were appeared and expanded. This paper classifies the 1950’s to 1980’s abstract sculpture as organic abstraction, informel abstraction, geometrical abstraction, and nonrepresentational sculpture which rejected the concept of a ‘creating.’ I have chosen the following artists to analyze their representing work: Kim Chong Yung and Kim Joung-Sook as organic abstract sculptors, Song Youngsu and Oh Jong-uk as informel abstract sculptors, Nam Cheol, Han In-Sung, Shim Moon-Seup as geometrical abstract sculptors, Shim Moon-Seup and Park Suk-Woon as the 1970’s nonrepresentational sculptors, Chun Kukgwang, Noh Jae-Seung and Kim Kwang-Woo for representing the energy within the nature. Art historical interpretation about Korean abstract sculpture is complicated. It is known that Korean abstract sculpture followed a flow of the Western modern sculpture or contemporary painting. At the same time, most sculptors began to become like modern artists as they represented in abstract style by escaping from reproducing the human body realistically. Furthermore, these artists were able to appoint artistic awareness of an individual.