Hyong-Keun YUN (1928-2007) had positioned himself as one of the most important Korean contemporary artists, after introducing himself to the art world in the late 1960s. After graduating from Hong-Ik University in 1957 with a BA in Western Painting, YUN had held his first solo exhibition in 1966. For nearly 40 years until his passing in 2007, YUN had actively exhibited his artistic talent, basing his productions in undeviating manner in regards to his original concept of psychological and abstract expressionism.

YUN’s paintings show the artist’s personal views on life and mother nature, while refusing to be confined within formality. In other words, his paintings are products that represent not only his own physique, but also the traces of his life, and the life itself. Once appraised as ‘a minimalist and an abstract artist who bears profound Oriental sentiments’ at the 46th Venice Biennial, YUN was consistent in regards to his artistic style of monochromatic paintings. After experiencing l’art informel of the Korean Abstract Expressionism in the late 1950s, YUN began producing abstract and expressive paintings composed of vertical elements in the early 1960s. From 1970s, YUN developed his style to produce wide and thickly brush stroked paintings that exhibit carefully placed, columnar elements which amply fill the pictorial space. Technically speaking, ‘form’ is nonexistent on YUN’s paintings. Instead, only colors such as dark brown and dark blue identify the different fields on his canvases.

The margins and the colors on YUN’s canvases experimentally, however, successfully blend and fuse the finite and the infinite, the plenitude and the inadequacy and expand them to new degrees of possibilities within the field of abstract expressionism. YUN attempts to enlighten the audiences’ deep inner side while relieving them of visual pleasure. They are shelters to stop and cogitate about life, provided for those who live in restless reality.

윤형근 화백(b.1928)은 70년대 중반부터 80년대 중반까지 한국 현대미술의 중요한 미술운동이었던‘한국 단색화’의 대표적 작가로서, 이는 한국의 전통적 자연관에 의해 탄생된 독창적이고 유일한 직관의 세계를 드러내고 있다. 그의 작품은 ‘태운 암갈색과 군청색의 블루’라는 두가지색의 물감과 마포 캔버스의 만남이라는 단순한 형식을 지니고 있다. 생 섬유질인 마포 캔버스 위에 반복적으로 그어놓은 단순한 선들은 깊이 있는 면으로 겹쳐지는 듯한 느낌을 자아내며 주위의 여백과 더불어 강한 흡인력으로 관람자를 감동시킨다. 작가 본인은 자신의 작품에 대해 ‘자연과 가까운 것’이라고 하듯이, 그의 작품은 무위자연의 동양정신을 담은 간결하고 힘찬 느낌을 동반한다. 자연을 닮은 그의 그림은 부르덥고도 강인하며, 우호적이자 명상적이다. 윤형근 화백은 1957년 홍익대학교 미술대학을 졸업하고 80년부터 프랑스에 머물며 아카데미 그랑쇼미에르를 수료하였다. 1990년대에는 경원대학교 총장을 지니기도 한 화가이자 교육자이다.