KB News Desk
K Auction’s Aug. 26 sale led by beloved painter’s signature motif; Lee Dai-won works also on the block
A painting from Park Soo-keun’s “Tree and Woman” series, one of the most recognizable motifs in modern Korean art, will headline K Auction’s August sale in Seoul, the auction house said Friday.
The 1950s canvas carries an estimate of 400 million to 800 million won ($283,000-$566,000) and leads a 102-lot sale valued at roughly 6.5 billion won, set for Aug. 26 at the company’s headquarters in Gangnam, southern Seoul. The work on offer comes from the collection of Margaret Miller, an American who collected Park’s paintings in the 1960s.
One of Korea’s most beloved modern painters, Park (1914-1965) taught himself to paint and spent his career depicting ordinary people in the lean years after the 1950-53 Korean War. He is known for the rough, granite-like surfaces of his canvases, which he created by applying and scraping back layer after layer of paint.
The “Tree and Woman” compositions, which he returned to from the mid-1950s until his death, place a bare tree at the center of the picture with women gathered beneath it. The series ranks among his signature subjects, alongside his scenes of women washing clothes and pounding grain.
In 2007, Park’s “A Wash Place” sold for 4.52 billion won ($3.19 million) at Seoul Auction, then the highest price ever paid for an artwork at auction in Korea. The painting, which depicts women doing laundry along a stream, held the top spot for eight years before Kim Whanki’s abstractions overtook it in 2015.
Park’s market has cooled in the years since. His paintings traded mostly in the 300 million to 800 million won range in the first half of this year, according to a report by Korea Art Authentication and Appraisal, an art market research firm.
Also in the sale are three paintings by Lee Dai-won (1921-2005), the colorist known for his “Farm” series and the subject of a retrospective currently running at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art’s Deoksugung branch. Works by Kim Whan-ki, Lee Jung-seop and Lee Ufan round out the sale.
The preview is on view free of charge at K Auction’s headquarters in Sinsa-dong through Aug. 26.
