MMCA 국립현대미술관 National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea

In East Asia, the genre of calligraphy has been called shūfǎ (書法; way/method/law of writing) in China and shodō (書道; way/principle of writing) in Japan. In Korea, calligraphy has been called seoye (書藝; art of writing) since the modern era. After liberation, artists paid attention to calligraphy as a means to revive national art and form Korea's original modernism. Calligraphers, too, were keen to encapsulate new modernity in their brushworks. Recently, calligraphy has been applied in various ways in design. Korean calligraphy and typography, which are considered the pop art of the art of writing, have shown new potential for contemporary calligraphy. Modern and Contemporary Korean Calligraphy, the MMCA's first special exhibition on calligraphy, highlights the roles and meaning of calligraphy in the modern and contemporary visual culture and art of Korea.