Almost-forgotten painter exhibits at Sungkok Art Museum

This is a stunning house. If you look out the north window of the living room, you'll see a panoramic view of colorfully-roofed houses and, beyond them, the stunning Mount Bukhan in the ridge, glowing blue-purple and off-white. If you turn your...

Art collectors Kim Tae-sup, left, and Yoon Young-ju stand with artist Won Guei-hong's paintings at Kim's house, which was once Won's house. [JOONGANG SUNDAY]

This is a stunning house. If you look out the north window of the living room, you'll see a panoramic view of colorfully-roofed houses and, beyond them, the stunning Mount Bukhan in the ridge, glowing blue-purple and off-white. If you turn your eyes to the west wall of the living room, you'll see a painting depicting the very same ridge. It has unique qualities in its composition and colors, as do a still life depicting roses in a vase and a landscape depicting an alleyway of Seoul in the late 1970s, which hang next to the painting of the mountain.

The paintings are by the almost-forgotten painter Won Guei-hong (1923-1980). He lived and painted at this very house, located in Buam-dong, near the old Fortress Wall of Seoul, in central Seoul. The house has now been inhabited for more than 30 years by a collector who was lured by a real estate agent to see this house for sale, fell in love with the piles of Won's paintings, and bought this house and the paintings at once with the money he prepared for buying a large apartment.

“Beyond - The Centennial Exhibition of Guei-Hong WON,” now on view at Sungkok Art Museum in Seoul until May 21, is the talk of the town among art lovers. "I didn't know there was a painter like this. His paintings are superb," "His paintings have the ambience of Edward Hopper’s, but are also different from Hopper’s," "I really love the gray tones of the colors." These comments are posted one after another on Instagram and Naver blogs. The K-pop sensation BTS’s leader RM, who is a well-known art lover, also visited the exhibition and posted some photos of the show on his Instagram account. Since then, the number of visitors, including the younger generation, has increased, the museum's representative said.

"Hoehyeon-dong" (1979) by Won Guei-hong [SUNGKOK ART MUSEUM]

"Mount Bukhan" by Won Guei-hong [SUNGKOK ART MUSEUM]

Two art patrons, Kim Tae-sup and Yoon Young-ju, rescued Won from oblivion by organizing the artist’s retrospective at Sungkok in celebration of his 100th birthday. Kim, former dean of Presbyterian University and Theological Seminary, is the one who bought the artist’s house in 1989 just because he was fascinated by his paintings. Yoon, chairman of the restaurant chain Wood & Brick from the founding family of Korea’s major confectionery company Crown Confectionery, has been collecting Won’s paintings since 1984 and made a calendar carrying Won’s paintings for the first time in 1987.

The two have kept the paintings of the almost forgotten artist Won for decades out of their true love for the works, A sharp contrast with collectors who buy and sell artwork to try to flip it for a profit. The Korea JoongAng Daily met the two collectors at Kim’s house in Buam-dong, which was once Won's home and workshop.

A painting by Won Guei-hong [SUNGKOK ART MUSEUM]

Most of Won’s remaining paintings are kept in the master bedroom, apart from the paintings hanging around the house and the 65 paintings Kim sent to the Sungkok Art Museum for the retrospective. Kim said, "When I came to see the house in 1989, there were a lot of paintings piled up in the hall bedroom. When I saw some of them, I told the house owner, 'I think the paintings are much better than the house.'”

“The house owner was Ms. Min, Won's widow,” he continued. “She was delighted and gave me a yellow envelope full of photos of the paintings to look at. I returned home with the envelope and stayed up all night looking at the photos, and the more I looked, the more I thought, 'Wow, there was a painter like this in Korea,' and it was different from the paintings of the elderly artists I had seen at the national exhibitions. In the end, I gave up on moving to a bigger apartment and, with the money [I] prepared for it, I bought the house and around 200 paintings inside all at once."

When asked if Kim’s wife would have objected to such a sudden decision, Kim replied. "She always trusted me, so there wasn't much opposition, especially when she saw the paintings and said, 'Oh, I saw them in a calendar, they are good.' I hadn't met Chairman Yoon yet at that time, and I've been thanking him [for creating the calendar] ever since, haha."

"Alleyway" (1979) by Won Guei-hong [SUNGKOK ART MUSEUM]

"Cheongun-dong" (1979) by Won Guei-hong [MOON SO-YOUNG]

"In 1984, I went to Won's memorial exhibition at Gongchang Gallery,” Yoon said. “After seeing his paintings, I visited the gallery again and again for several days in a row, feeling like my eyes were being opened. I thought, 'This man's works should not be scattered.'

“So, I went to visit Won's wife,” he continued. “I bought three paintings first, then some more, and after the exhibition was over, I made a proposal: I wanted to buy all the works and create the Won Guei-hong Museum. At first she was positive about the proposal. But then she hesitated to give the final answer, because she didn’t want to let go of all the remaining works with her husband’s touches, as he had been dead for only four years back then. While she remained indecisive, I became busy as I took the new position as CEO of Crown Confectionery. So, I couldn’t pay attention to the issue and lost touch with her. Still, at that time, I made a Crown Bakery calendar with Won's paintings, which became a sensation."

"Seongbuk-dong" (1977) by Won Guei-hong [MOON SO-YOUNG]

Since then, Yoon has been buying Won's paintings at galleries and art auctions wherever he can find them. Eighteen of his paintings are in the exhibition at Sungkok Art Museum. Yoon once found one of Won's paintings at a vintage shop in Janganpyeong, eastern Seoul. "There were hundreds of paintings without frames, stacked like vinyl records, and Won’s painting was sandwiched between them. I felt very sad." If it weren't for Yoon and Kim, Won's paintings would have been "scattered like dust," says Lee Sou-Kyoun, chief curator of Sungkok Art Museum.

But why was Won so forgotten and undervalued, despite a wide range of art lovers from Kim and Yoon to younger people like RM being fascinated by his paintings now? In addition, his paintings have historical importance, because many of them depict actual architectural scenes of Seoul in the 1970s.

According to the two collectors and Sungkok Art Museum, it is related to Won’s eccentric character and life. Won was a son of a wealthy family. He went to Japan to study economics but fell in love with art and studied painting at the private academy of the important Japanese painter Genichiro Inokuma (1902-1993). Won was obsessed with building his own artistic world by endlessly reading books on art theory and philosophy, and was a fierce perfectionist who refused to show his work to others until it was complete. At one point, he even burned all of his artwork. He didn't have a solo exhibition until he was 55, and when he finally had two solo exhibitions that he was satisfied with, he died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 57. So he sank into oblivion.

"Susaek Station" by Won Guei-hong [SUNGKOK ART MUSEUM]

“He went against his father's wishes and became a painter,” Kim wrote in the exhibition's introduction. “In the context of his intransigent nature and the fact that he had to sell the Bucheon orchard left to him by his father, there was only one way for him to go: painting. He painted this alley and that alley with his paintbrush at dawn, when there was no human presence.”

Yoon wrote “He left behind two paintings of Susaek Station... The second work, which I consider to be his masterpiece, shows a world where 'the dead union of various elements has been discarded' and unnecessary things have disappeared... It depicts a world that is tranquil but whose depths are unfathomable.”

How did the two collectors come to meet and collaborate? Yoon said, "Every once in a while, I'd search for articles about Won, but there weren't too many. Then, in 2007 or so, I came across a blog post about him, so I wrote a comment identifying myself as a collector of his works. Then, a comment to my comment was added, saying, ‘Some of his works are at my home!’ It was Mr. Kim's daughter, so we got in touch, and I came straight over."

Since then, the two collectors have stayed in touch, exploring the world of Won's art, and now they've organized a museum exhibition that has generated an enthusiastic response from people who never knew him. In the age when artworks are bought and sold like financial instruments, this is an example of what it means to be a true art patron.

"Red Building"(1979) by Won Guei-hong [SUNGKOK ART MUSEUM]

BY MOON SO-YOUNG [moon.soyoung@joongang.co.kr]