How a Budget-Strapped Museum Secured Jung Gyu’s 'Church' (MMCA Collection Story)
Creatrip Team
2 months ago
The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) in Korea acquired Jung Gyu’s 1955 painting "Church" (oil on canvas) early in its collecting history despite tight budgets. Numbered MMCA 137, the work came from fellow artist Lee Hang-seong’s collection after a 1972 posthumous exhibition for Jung, who died in 1971. Jung’s pared-down, geometric style—seen in simplified shapes like trees, a church, and jars—combines high-chroma color fields with layered underpainting and shows Cubist influence. He framed abstraction as rooted in lived reality and traditional Korean visual motifs rather than foreign fashions, aiming for “realistic art” shaped by contemporary experience. Jung often integrated playful touches into compositions and even his signature (signed with the character 圭) into the picture plane. The piece reflects postwar hopes and humanism and is on view at MMCA Cheongju through March 8. The article also notes the scarcity of Jung’s surviving works and hopes lost pieces will reappear to fuller reveal his diverse practice in painting, printmaking, and ceramics.
