Yun Hyong Keun

A leading figure in Korea’s Dansaekhwa painting movement, Yun Hyong-keun was renowned for large-scale canvases that often feature meditative bands of umber and ultramarine paint. Yun began to develop his visually stark, technically complex style in the early 1970s; he was particularly inspired by Mark Rothko’s color field paintings, which he saw on a 1974 trip to New York. He rose to prominence in Korea and represented his country at the 1995 Venice Biennale. Featuring layers of paint on unprimed linen or mulberry bark paper, Yun’s evocative works have been internationally celebrated following his death in 2007. In 2018, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, hosted a major retrospective of the artist’s work that traveled to the Palazzo Fortuny in Venice. Yun’s work is included in the museum collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Chinati Foundation, the Glenstone, Tate Modern, and the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum.