Now In Korea
Master of Korean Ink Painting Park Dae-sung Opens Solo Show in San Francisco
Creatrip Team
2 months ago
Renowned Korean ink painter Park Dae-sung (age 81) is hosting a solo exhibition, “What Echoes in the Small Mountain,” at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco through July 13. Park, celebrated for adapting traditional Korean painting (minhwa? note: actually traditional Korean ink painting is 'sumukhwa'—use parentheses) and calligraphic brushwork into a modern, semi-abstract visual language, has helped redefine contemporary Korean ink painting (sumukhwa). Despite losing his left arm in childhood, he pursued art largely through self-study, earning major awards including the 1979 Grand Prize at the JoongAng Art Competition and the 2020 Order of Cultural Merit. His recent U.S. shows include exhibitions at LACMA, Harvard’s Korea Institute, Hood Museum, and touring galleries; his works are held in major museums such as LACMA, Hood Museum, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and Korea’s National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art. The San Francisco show features a new Yosemite series (2025) inspired by California’s Yosemite National Park, alongside earlier Korean landscape donations like “Cave of Enlightenment” (2006) and “Nine Dragon Falls” (2004). Sketchbooks and tools are displayed to reveal his creative process, and the program includes artist talks with the museum and Stanford University discussing his contemporary approach to traditional ink painting (sumukhwa). The exhibition underscores cross-cultural appreciation of natural beauty and the long-standing relationship between Park and the Asian Art Museum, which has collected his work for over two decades.
Like the information?