Korea’s Dansaekhwa Artists

Korea’s Dansaekhwa Artists: Exploring Minimalist and Monochromatic Painting

Dansaekhwa (단색화), or Korean Monochromatic Painting, is not merely an Asian variant of Western Minimalism; it is a distinct movement born from Korea’s specific historical, cultural, and spiritual context. While it shares formal similarities with Minimalism—such as reduction, repetition, and a focus on materiality—its philosophy and intentions are deeply different.

The artists of Dansaekhwa, working primarily in the 1970s, used a limited palette and repetitive processes not as an end in itself, but as a method to achieve a meditative state, connect with nature, and embody a Eastern philosophical mindset.

Here are the key Dansaekhwa artists whose work engages with and redefines the concepts of Minimal art:

The Pioneers of Dansaekhwa

These artists are considered the core figures who defined the movement.

1. Park Seo-Bo (b. 1931)

• Role: The theoretical and spiritual leader of the movement.
• Key Work & Technique: His lifelong “Écriture” series. Beginning in the late 1960s, Park would apply wet hanji (Korean paper) to a canvas covered with monochrome paint. While the paint was still wet, he would repeatedly draw pencil lines across the surface in a slow, meditative rhythm. This process created subtle textures and ridges, capturing the artist’s physical energy and time itself.
• Philosophy: His work is about “effacement” – the act of emptying the mind and ego through repetitive, physical practice. It is influenced by Korean Taoist and Buddhist principles of achieving enlightenment through action without desire.

2. Ha Chong-Hyun (b. 1935)

• Role: Master of materiality and physicality.
• Key Work & Technique: His iconic “Conjunction” series. Ha would push thick oil paint through the back of a burlap canvas (often using a common Korean wire mesh called sanggakji) to the front. This “back-pressure” technique resulted in a raw, textured surface that emphasized the innate qualities of the paint and fabric.
• Philosophy: His work is a struggle and a dialogue with his materials. It’s not about representing something else but revealing the “being” of the paint and canvas themselves—a conversation between the artist’s control and the material’s natural resistance.

3. Lee Ufan (b. 1936)

• Role: The most internationally recognized artist linked to the movement and a key theorist. (He is also a central figure in Japan’s Mono-ha (School of Things) movement).
• Key Work & Technique: His serene “From Point” and “From Line” paintings. Lee would mix powdered pigment with glue to create a single color. With a large brush, he would then place a single stroke of paint on the canvas, followed by another, each stroke absorbing the leftover pigment from the previous one. The paintings are records of this gradual process of appearing and disappearing.
• Philosophy: Lee’s work is about the “encounter” between the made (the painted mark) and the unmade (the empty canvas). The vast emptiness of the canvas is not a void but a charged field of energy, and the painted marks are a modest, respectful intervention into that space.

4. Chung Sang-Hwa (b. 1932)

• Role: The master of a meticulous, process-based technique.
• Key Work & Technique: Chung developed a unique multi-step process: he would repeatedly apply acrylic paint to a canvas, let it dry, crack it, fold it, and then peel layers away before reapplying more paint. This lengthy, ritualistic process could take years for a single work, embedding the canvas with a deep, geological sense of time and history.
• Philosophy: His work is often seen as a metaphor for the weathered surfaces of nature—old walls, eroded stones, cracked earth. It embodies the passage of time and the cycles of construction and erosion.

5. Kwon Young-Woo (1926-2013)

• Role: A pioneer who focused on the deconstruction of painting itself.
• Key Work & Technique: Instead of painting on paper, Kwon used the paper itself as his medium. He would scratch, tear, peel, and puncture traditional Korean hanji paper, creating delicate, sculptural reliefs that explored texture, light, and shadow.
• Philosophy: His work dissolves the boundary between painting and sculpture. By violating the integrity of the paper’s surface, he was engaging in a radical act that was both destructive and creative, questioning the very definition of a painting

6. Yun Hyong-keun (1928–2007)

Yun Hyong-keun is one of the most recognized figures in Dansaekhwa, often referred to as “the gatekeeper of Korean modernism.” His work is characterized by large canvases covered with broad, vertical strokes of umber and ultramarine. Yun’s minimal palette and meditative repetition reflect both personal suffering—shaped by war, imprisonment, and political turmoil—and a deep philosophical engagement with nature and existence. His paintings are not purely abstract but resonate with a spiritual quality, evoking gates, thresholds, and the idea of passage between the earthly and the infinite. Yun sought simplicity, stating that his work was an attempt to embody the essence of “heaven and earth.”

Role in Dansaekhwa
Yun Hyong-keun is regarded as one of the central figures of Dansaekhwa and often called the “gatekeeper” of the movement. His works embody the spirit of restraint, meditation, and the pursuit of transcendence that defined Dansaekhwa, bridging Korean modernism with international minimalism.

Key Work & Technique
Yun’s canvases are dominated by vertical bands of deep umber and ultramarine applied onto raw linen or cotton. A representative example is his Burnt Umber & Ultramarine Blue series, where broad brushstrokes saturate the canvas, allowing pigment to bleed into the fibers. His technique involved diluting paint with turpentine, so it would soak into the canvas like ink on hanji (traditional Korean paper), erasing the boundary between form and ground.

Philosophy
Yun described his work as representing “the gate of heaven and earth.” His minimal palette reflected his belief that simplicity was the path to truth. Influenced by both Taoist and Confucian thought, Yun’s practice was as much spiritual as it was artistic—his canvases became meditative thresholds, offering viewers an encounter with silence and infinity.

7. Lee Dong Youb (b. 1946)

Lee Dong Youb’s contribution to Dansaekhwa is rooted in the exploration of spatial perception and materiality. Unlike some of his contemporaries who emphasized heavy texture or dense pigment, Lee often worked with controlled brushwork and restrained surfaces, creating rhythm through repetition and subtle variation. His canvases engage with the void as much as with painted areas, reflecting a distinctly Korean sensibility toward emptiness (heoi) and silence. Through this dialogue between mark and absence, Lee’s works reveal a meditative inquiry into being, perception, and the passage of time.

Role in Dansaekhwa
Lee Dong Youb expanded the language of Dansaekhwa through his focus on perception, rhythm, and the dialogue between painted and unpainted space. His work added a distinct sensitivity to void and absence within the movement.

Key Work & Technique
In works such as From Line and other linear explorations, Lee built compositions with controlled brushstrokes—thin, repeated marks spaced to create rhythm across the canvas. Unlike heavily textural Dansaekhwa, Lee’s surfaces often remain restrained, with a delicate balance between painted lines and the untouched canvas. His technique emphasizes the relationship between form and void, using the white ground as an active element rather than an empty backdrop.

Philosophy
Lee’s philosophy rests on the Korean concept of heoi (emptiness) and the idea that absence carries equal weight as presence. His canvases are meditations on perception—how repetition, subtle variation, and space shape our understanding of time and being. For Lee, painting was a means of contemplating the invisible, not just representing the visible.

8. Choi Myoung Young (b. 1941)

Choi Myoung Young is known for his rhythmic, linear brushstrokes, which at first glance may resemble calligraphy but operate within a different framework. His work in Dansaekhwa is marked by the repetition of horizontal or vertical lines across large surfaces, a practice rooted in discipline, process, and endurance. These repeated gestures transform the canvas into a record of time and labor, emphasizing both the material act of painting and the spiritual process behind it. For Choi, the act of repetition becomes a form of meditation, dissolving the boundary between artist and medium.

Role in Dansaekhwa
Choi Myoung Young is celebrated for pushing Dansaekhwa into the realm of process-driven art. His repetitive, disciplined gestures embody the physical labor and endurance central to the movement, reinforcing its meditative essence.

Key Work & Technique
Choi’s paintings are built through endless horizontal or vertical strokes across the surface, as seen in his Line series. His brushstrokes resemble calligraphic marks but resist becoming text; instead, they accumulate into rhythmic fields. The repetitive action transforms the canvas into both a record of time and a site of meditation. His technique values gesture, discipline, and persistence over image-making.

Philosophy
For Choi, painting is less about representation and more about the act itself. His philosophy reflects a Zen-like approach where repetition erases ego, allowing the artist to merge with the process. Each line is both ordinary and profound, embodying the passage of time and the intimate relationship between body, brush, and canvas.

9Dansaekhwa: A Shared Spirit
The work of Yun, Lee, and Choi demonstrates the breadth of Dansaekhwa, a movement that emerged in South Korea in the 1970s amid rapid modernization and political tension. Unlike Western minimalism, which often sought objectivity and industrial precision, Dansaekhwa is deeply rooted in Korean traditions of philosophy, Buddhism, and Confucianism, emphasizing process, tactility, and meditative engagement with materials. By pushing, dragging, layering, or erasing paint, these artists transformed the canvas into both a physical and spiritual field.
Through Yun’s solemn gates of color, Lee’s meditations on space, and Choi’s disciplined gestures, we see not only the individual voices of three important artists but also the shared spirit of Dansaekhwa: a pursuit of transcendence through repetition, material, and restraint.

Dansaekhwa vs. Western Minimalism: A Crucial Distinction

Feature	Western Minimalism	Dansaekhwa (Korean Monochrome)
Primary Goal	To create objective, self-referential industrial objects. The art is a “specific object.”	To document a subjective, meditative process. The art is a “record of an event.”
Relationship to Artist	Removes the artist’s hand and emotion (e.g., Judd using fabricators).	Centers on the artist’s physical, repetitive action and mental state.
Materials	Industrial, prefabricated (Plexiglas, aluminum, fluorescent lights).	Natural, traditional, and tactile (hanji paper, oil paint, burlap, pigment).
Philosophy	Rooted in Western phenomenology (how the viewer perceives the object in space).	Rooted in Eastern philosophy (Taoism, Zen Buddhism)—emptying the ego, harmony with nature.
Viewer’s Role	To perceive the object’s physicality in their own space.	To contemplate the artist’s process and feel a sense of meditative calm.

In conclusion, the artists of Dansaekhwa adopted a minimalist visual language not for formalist reasons, but as a necessary conduit for a spiritual and philosophical exploration unique to their Korean identity in the post-war era. Their work stands as a powerful and profound counterpart to the Minimalism of the West.