[Gallery Walk] Capturing Home, Nature, and Family... A Pure Gaze Like That of a Child

Hyundai Gallery Retrospective Exhibition for the 30th Anniversary of Jang Uk-jin 'Home, Family, Nature, and Jang Uk-jin' Until the 28th of Next Month

[Asia Economy Reporter Byunghee Park] As I came out after viewing Jang Uk-jin’s retrospective, it soon began to snow. He would have liked that too. After all, he was a painter who expressed a pure, childlike heart throughout his life.

Hyundai Gallery is holding a 30th anniversary exhibition of painter Jang Uk-jin (1917?1990) titled “Home, Family, Nature, and Jang Uk-jin” until the 28th of next month. About 50 works are on display, including one of Jang Uk-jin’s representative pieces, “Self-Portrait (1951),” “Family Portrait (1972),” “Landscape (1980),” and works painted in the year of his passing such as “Tree,” “Chicken and Child,” and “Night and Old Man” (all 1990).

Jang Uk-jin lived through turbulent times including the Japanese colonial period, the Korean War, and the era of industrialization. However, his perspective on the world remained as pure as that of a child. He painted pastoral and folk-themed pictures. His subjects were nature and family. He repeatedly painted trees, houses, people, magpies, the sun, the moon, cows, chickens, and pigs. The paintings, expressed in simple forms and colors, evoke warmth.

Jang Uk-jin 'Self-Portrait', 1951, Oil on paper, 14.8×10.8 cm
Photo by Hyundai Gallery

“Self-Portrait” depicts a gentleman in a suit walking against a backdrop of golden fields. A dog follows behind him, and four birds fly in the sky.

After the outbreak of the Korean War, Jang Uk-jin fled to Busan. In September 1951, he returned to his hometown, Yeongi-gun, Chungnam Province, and stayed there until the following spring before going back to Busan. “Self-Portrait” was painted during his stay in his hometown. The golden background is dazzling to the extent that it is hard to believe it was painted during wartime displacement. There is no sign of chaos in the painting?only peace and leisure.

Professor Youngmok Jeong, Emeritus at Seoul National University, described Jang Uk-jin’s paintings as “depicting everyday spaces that reverse time, stop time, and transcend time.”

Few paintings from before the war remain. The artist’s family reported that when they returned to their home in Seoul right after the 1953 armistice, all the works he had painted up to that point had been lost.

Jang Uk-jin, 'Family', 1972, oil on canvas, 7.5×14.8 cm
[Photo by Hyundai Gallery]

Jang Uk-jin painted with nature as his companion. He would start his day by waking up at dawn and taking walks in the nature surrounding his home and studio. “By nature, I dislike Seoul. I dislike the civilization symbolized by Seoul. That is why, for the past 12 years, I have completely abandoned Seoul and set up my studio in Deokso, where the Han River flows at the doorstep.” This is an excerpt from his article “The World of Dawn” contributed to the magazine Samteo in September 1974.

From 1963, he painted at his “Deokso Studio” in Yangju-gun, Gyeonggi Province (now Namyangju City, Gyeonggi Province). He moved studios several times. In 1975, he abandoned the Deokso studio and moved behind his home in Myeongnyun-dong, Jongno-gu, Seoul, because factories and national roads had been built in Deokso, erasing its tranquility. After living in Myeongnyun-dong for five years, he set up a studio in Suanbo, Chungbuk Province, in 1980. When commercial facilities made Suanbo noisy, he moved his studio again in 1986 to Yongin-gun, Gyeonggi Province (now Yongin City).

Jang Uk-jin 'Hwangtotgil', 1989, oil on canvas, 46×46 cm.jpg

This exhibition fits well with the current times when people spend more time with their families. Jang Uk-jin often painted families gathered closely together, as in “Family Portrait.” He preferred to be called a painter with the character “家” (home/family) in his name rather than a painter or professor.

The paintings, resembling the artist himself, are simple and humble. All the exhibited works are small. The largest piece, “Earthen Road” from 1989, measures only 46 cm by 46 cm.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.