Park Seo-Bo

Park was best known for his ‘Ecriture’ series of paintings. Initiated in the late 1960s, the ‘Ecriture’ series embraced this spiritual approach and were inextricably linked to notions of time, space and material, concepts which underpinned all of the artist’s work. In the early works, Park used repeated pencil lines incised into a still-wet monochromatic painted surface, and the later works expanded upon this language through the introduction of hanji, a traditional Korean paper hand-made from mulberry bark, which is adhered to the canvas surface. This development, along with the introduction of colour, enabled an expansive transformation of his practice while continuing the quest for emptiness though reduction.

Park Seo-Bo graduated from the painting department of Hong-Ik University in Seoul in 1954. He became Dean of the University in 1973 and received an Honorary Doctorate from there in 2000. He was widely lauded throughout his career for championing Korean art and was bestowed the Geumgwan Medal, the highest Order of Cultural Merit in South Korea, in 2021. In 2018, Park received the Art Society Asia Game Changer Awards in 2018 and the Silver Crown Cultural Medal in Korea in 2011. His work has been exhibited internationally, including Château La Coste, France (2021); Langen Foundation, Neuss (2020); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2019); National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA), Seoul (2019); MFA Boston, Massachusetts (2018); the Venice Biennale, Italy (1988 and 2015); Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul (2014); Portland Museum of Art, Oregon (2010); Singapore Art Museum (2008); Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2007); Tate Liverpool, UK (1992); Brooklyn Museum, New York (1981), and Expo ’67, Montreal, Canada (1967). His work is included in the collections of the Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio; Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, UAE; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; K20, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, Germany; M+, Hong Kong; The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Tate, London; and Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar, Netherlands; amongst others.