Park Seo-bo

Park Seo-bo (also known as , Park Seo-Bo or Seo-Bo Park) is a Korean painter, part of the first generation of modern artists in South Korea. He has been a prolific painter well known for his " paintings, and has been one of the most influential figures in modern Korean art history. He is now widely considered the godfather of Dansaekhwa originated in South Korea in 1970s.
Life.
Early life.
Seo-bo was born as the third son of 8 children in Yecheon County of North Gyeongsang, Chōsen in Japanese-occupied South Korea on 15 November 1931. He was originally named Jae Hong Park. The name Seo-bo has been used since 1955 as a pseudonym to avoid forced conscription. Around 1940, his family moved from Yecheon to Anseong in Gyeonggi Province where his father Jae Hoon Park started to work as a local solicitor at his own house. They lived comfortably in a big house. From childhood, Seo-bo loved drawing. He spent his time copying great pieces of oriental painting by the great living Korean artists. Although his father wanted him to study law, Seo-bo insisted on his pursuing art. In spite of his father's opposition, he entered Hongik University to study oriental painting under the lead of Yi Eungro.
Korean War.
However, his happy freshman year was interrupted by the outburst of Korean War. He narrowly survived the war time chaos, experiencing his father's abrupt death, drafts both by North Korean and South Korean forces and long winter evacuating on foot from his hometown Anseong to Masan. Seo-bo barely managed to go back to school in 1952. Hongik University temporarily moved to Busan during the war time. He enrolled for the second year and changed his major to western painting because his professors of oriental painting were all gone. He learned painting from scratch under the lead of Whanki Kim for 3 more years and graduated in 1955. Although the ceasefire was announced in 1953, the whole country were suffering from poverty and immorality. There was competition between refugees, widows and orphans for food and money. Seo-bo was not different from them. He earned his school expenses by selling portraits to US soldiers on streets and restaurants. He slept in an empty classroom of the school and missed meals until someone was willing to buy one from him. He did paintings or drawings with the last drops of oil paint tubes and little pieces of charcoal that his classmates discarded and sometimes even with soy sauce he stole from a restaurant. He thought there was nobody to rely on in the world. He worked harder and harder for future success.
Art group activities.
However, he became a fugitive. Although he completed his military service at Corps of Military Staff Clerks during the last semester, the government of Syngman Rhee broke its promise to let the Korean Army conscript the male graduates at the graduation ceremony. Informed by his friends at other universities, Seo-bo did not go to the ceremony and ran away immediately. He went to his friend with great knowledge about Chinese classics to ask to make up a new name for him. From that time on, Seo-bo pretended to be in his late 30s, wearing a fedora with a mustache and was called by the pseudonym. He even brought his best friend Kim Tschang-yeul as a bodyguard on his honeymoon trip along with his bride because he was a policeman. 
He received a prize at the Korean National Art Exhibition in 1954 as a student and again in 1955. However, the National Art Exhibition had been never free of troubles since it was established in 1949. Seo-bo declared objection to the National Art Exhibition with three of his school friends and opened their own group exhibition in 1956. That caught public attention and the newspapers spotlighted the young artists' defiance. From 1957 to 1960, Seo-bo participated in group exhibitions of Hyun-Dai Artists Association where he became close with Kim Tschang-yeul. The Hyun-Dae Artists Association is well known for initiating Informel for the first time in Korea.
Marriage and Job.
He got married in 1958 and became a father to his first son Seung-jo in 1959. He did not get a proper job because he was a wanted draft evader. It was the time when modern paintings did not sell. His wife and child were suffering in poverty. Seo-bo needed a break-through in his life. So he left for Paris without hesitance when he was selected as a national representative young artist for the Young Painters of the World in Paris in 1961. It was a residency program organized by the French National Committee of International Association of Art with support of UNESCO. When he came back from Paris to Seoul, he started teaching at Hongik University, Seoul. However, he became a scapegoat in dynamics between professors and the private school foundation, which led to his resignation. Out of work, he stayed at home and happened to discover his life-long topic of resignation and self-discipline while observing his 3-year-old second son, Seung-ho. Since 1967, Seo-bo made an attempt on his first work of his signature style "Ecriture." In 1970, he was called back to professorship at Hongik University and served for education until he retired in 1997. He was the dean of the Graduate School of Fine Arts, Hongik University from 1985 to 1986 and the dean of College of Fine Arts from 1986 to 1990. He received an honorary doctorate from the same university in 2000.
Birth of Ecriture and Contemporary Art Movement.
In addition to his commitment to education, he also worked hard for the Federation of Artistic & Cultural Organization of Korea for 10 years in 1970s and held the post of chairman from 1977 to 1980. He organized new forms of exhibition such as "Ecole de Séoul" (1975–1999) and "Indépendants"(1973~1980) and Contemporary Art Festivals at each local cities. When he failed the election for a second term in office, he completely concentrated himself on painting in his new studio in Anseong he built in 1981. There he came across to the Korean paper "Hanji" and his "Ecriture" transformed. Art historians agree to divide his Eciture series into three phases of initial stage, middle stage, and last stage. "Ecriture" with Hanji appear both at the middle stage and the last stage. More than 150 pieces of "Ecriture" on canvas were burned in an accidental fire of his Anseong studio in 1996. This was such a shock to Seo-bo as to stop visiting the studio until his wife sold it in 2006. He had a new studio with a living space built in Sungsan-dong, Mapo-gu, Seoul in 1997 and moved his home to that building in 1999. He was near to death because of myocardial infarction in 1994, and again luckily survived a sudden attack of cerebral infarction in 2009.
Late life.
He founded the Seo-bo Art and Cultural Foundation, Seoul in 1994 and had remained its president until his first son took the position in 2014. He had his second retrospective exhibition at National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul in 2019. He lives at his new house in Yeonhui-dong, Seoul with his wife and the family of his second son and is still working on paintings to be active against his aging and chronic diseases. He has two sons and one daughter with three grandchildren.
Art.
Park's visual language begins with the Korean Civil War in 1950. He had only just entered Hong-Ik University to study art, but instead the interruption of war brought about what one might call a "crash-course". He said many times:
In a similar vein to Paul Klee's famous words, "The more horrifying this world becomes (as it is these days) the more art becomes abstract", Park turned toward abstraction in the 1950s. None of his works from the early days of his career were preserved, and only a photograph of his work, "Sunny Spot "(1955) remains. The artwork was part of an infamous exhibition titled "Four Artists' Show" in May 1956, which was a group exhibition composed of Park, Kim Young Whan, Kim Choong Sun and Moon Woo Shik. The show was a resistance against the old art order in Korea that had its roots since the Japanese colonial days.
Park and his tutelage of artist friends founded Hyundae-Mihyup in 1957. Bang Geun Tack, who will later become a well-known art critic in Korea, recognized Hyundae-Mihyup's art as "Informel".
Cheon Seung-Bok, a journalist for the Korean Republic, describes Park's artistic style as such:
Park went to Paris in 1961 with the intention of staying for a short while, but due to unforeseen circumstances, he ended up living in Paris for over a year. During his time in Paris, his artistic tendency and outlook changed significantly, which ultimately resulted in his exiting the "Art Informel" scene toward his own artistic formulation, the "Primordialis "series in 1962. Park's comments on the Parisian art scene was as such:
Toward the end of the 1960s, Park began experimenting in new forms, the "Hereditarius" series. Oh Kwang Soo, art critic, described his works as such:
Then in June 1973 at Tokyo Gallery, Park began his ongoing journey through the "Ecriture "series. This is what Park said at the time:
Exhibitions.
2020
2019-2020
2019
2018
2017
2016
2015
2019-2020
2019
2018-2019 
2018 
2017 
2016 
Special Exhibition Celebrating the 130th Anniversary of Korea-France Diplomatic Ties "Part II. Exchange Exhibition of Korean Resident Artists in France", Youngeun Museum, Gwangju, Korea. 
2015-2016
2015 
Awards.
2019
2018 
2015 
2014
2011 
2009
2008 
2004 
1999 
1996
1995 
1994 
1993
1990
1987 
1984 
1979 
1976 
1972 
1961 