The Charm of Watercolors Hidden Behind Oil Paintings... Art Expressed Through 'Water'

National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Cheongju, Hosts Special Exhibition "Watercolor: Painting with Water"
Introducing Over 100 Works by 34 Artists
Exploring the Evolution of Watercolor Art
Highlighting the Enduring Artistic Value of Watercolor, Often Overshadowed by Oil Painting

A solo exhibition featuring watercolor works will be held at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Cheongju, from the 21st of this month to September 7th. The aim is to shift the public perception that regards watercolor as an unfinished preliminary stage of oil paintings and to introduce watercolor as an independent art genre by closely examining its unique characteristics.

This exhibition will showcase watercolor works by leading Korean artists such as Lee Jung-seop, Jang Uk-jin, and Park Soo-keun. Additionally, works by Lee In-sung, Seo Dong-jin, Seo Jin-dal, and Bae Dong-shin, who have recently been recognized for their outstanding contributions to the field of watercolor, will be introduced. Furthermore, the exhibition will present works by 34 Korean artists, including Ryu In and Moon Shin, who have incorporated characteristics of other art forms such as sculpture into watercolor.

Lee Jung-seop, "Children Playing in Water" (1941). Courtesy of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Cheongju

The exhibition is divided into three parts. First, it explores the painting styles at the time of the introduction of Western painting through works by first-generation watercolor artists and modern period painters. It also examines how watercolor harmonized with the tradition of ink wash painting. Early watercolor works were mainly plein air paintings created outdoors. Seo Dong-jin, who held the first watercolor exhibition, painted the cityscape of Daegu, and Son Il-bong, who won awards at the Joseon Art Exhibition, presented Western-style paintings featuring landscapes and still lifes. Lee Jung-seop, expressing longing for his family through symbolic imagination, applied the Oriental painting technique of molgolbeop (a method of painting forms without outlines) to the gradations of watercolor paint.

Secondly, as the domestic art trend shifted toward oil painting, the exhibition highlights works that shed the traditional perception of watercolor as an elitist art form and introduced new attempts. Artist Jeon Sang-soo abstracted real landscapes using omission and exaggeration with his unique sensibility, while Ryu In expressed existential and temporal anxieties with intense colors. The exhibition explores techniques that effectively utilize the transparent and spreading qualities of watercolor, showing similarities to art historical styles such as Expressionism, Symbolism, and Surrealism.

Lastly, the exhibition seeks to find abstraction within the watercolor domain in the monochrome painting trend that had the greatest influence on the Korean art scene. Emerging in the mid-1970s, the monochrome painting trend deeply impacted the domestic art world. It was varied in form and materials and sparked an abstract art craze with different characteristics depending on regional specificities. This exhibition features works such as Kim Jung-ja’s color field paintings, which showcase a unique sense of color through the spreading and dripping of paint, and Kwak In-sik’s works that express overlapping flower petals using the transparent and translucent qualities of watercolor and hanji paper.

Yoon Jong-sook 'Asan'. Courtesy of National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Cheongju

At the entrance of the exhibition hall, a site-specific mural by artist Yoon Jong-sook will be installed. To reflect on the museum’s role concerning environment and regeneration, the existing exhibition hall structure was used as is. The artist drew the landscape of her hometown, Asan in Chungnam Province, with freehand lines without preliminary sketches.

Jeon Hyun-sun 'Day and Night Walking Side by Side' (2017). Courtesy of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Cheongju

In connection with this exhibition, Jeon Hyun-sun’s “Day and Night Walking Side by Side,” created using watercolor techniques, will be displayed in the visible storage room on the second floor. This large-scale painting consists of 15 panels, each canvas revealing different perspectives and representations of different eras, much like sequences in a film.

Kim Sung-hee, director of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, stated, “This exhibition is the first at our museum to be solely dedicated to the watercolor genre. The characteristics of watercolor introduced in the modern period lie in a continuous point that is not disconnected from the past, and its clear spirit continues to this day. I hope that the inclusiveness and harmony inherent in watercolor will also apply to us living in the present.”