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Kim Tschang-yeul (1929–2021) entered Seoul National University College of Fine Arts in 1948 and joined the Contemporary Artists Association in 1956, actively producing artwork with informel leanings. He participated in the 2nd Biennale de Paris (1961) and in 1965, he relocated to the Art Students League of New York, where he would study woodcut prints for four years. After taking part in the 7th Annual Avant-Garde Festival of New York in 1969, he left the United States to settle in Paris. Beginning with his first solo exhibition in Paris in 1973, Kim began producing and exhibiting his signature Waterdrops series and persistently worked with the theme until his death in 2021. He held solo exhibitions across the globe including at the MMCA in 1993 and at Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume in 2004, and the Jeju Kim Tschang-Yeul Museum of Art was founded in his name in 2016.
Kim Tschang-yeul lived in New York in the late 1960s, mostly producing works in which geometric shapes are arranged meticulously in the center of the canvas. About the works produced during this period, Kim once remarked, “These works are from a time when I was drying up inside like naphthalene. At the time, I felt defeated like I was the only one crying.” Untitled is made up of small and large circles surrounded by multiple layers of curved strips, showing Kim’s color-field abstraction and Op Art tendencies. The curved strips display visible brush marks while the circles are shaded using spray lacquer to create the illusion of three-dimensionality. Though each of the circles in the work is closer to a geometric form, the difference in their sizes makes the overall composition seem organic.
