단색화가 하종현(Ha Chong-Hyun 河鐘賢, B. 1935) 화백의 회고전이 9월 25일부터 내년 1월 25일까지 샌프란시스코 아시아미술관(관장 이소영)에서 열린다. 큐레이터는 김선정 아트선재 예술감독.

 

하종현 화백은  캔버스 대신 성긴 마포(삼베, hemp cloth)를 틀에 고정시킨 후 뒷면에서 물감을 밀어서 표면으로 배어나오게 해서 손질하는 배압법(背壓法)으로 작업한다. 마포의 올 틈새로 나온 물감을 손이나 칼, 붓 등으로 누르거나 긁어냄으로써 표면에 생기는 흔적이 투박하면서도, 미학적인 촉감을 만들어낸다. 뒤에서부터 그리는 그림은 전통 회화기법을 비트는 것.

 

경상남도 산청에서 태어난 하종현 화백은 홍익대 회화과 졸업. 홍익대 미대 교수, 학장을 거쳐 서울시립미술관장을 지냈다.1965년 파리비엔날레 한국 대표작가로 참가했으며, 1988년 베니스비엔날레 커미셔너로 활동했다.  2003년 밀라노 무디마 파운데이션 현대미술관 전시(2003),  과천 국립현대미술관 회고전(2012), 2000년 홍대 교수직을 정년 퇴직하면서 하종현미술상을 제정했다. 2007 프랑스 문화훈장을 받았다. 

 

 

Ha Chong-Hyun: Retrospective

 

September 25, 2026–January 25, 2027

Asian Art Museum, San Francisco

Ha Chong Hyun in his studio. Photo: Chunho An

Asian Art Museum presents first North American survey of the acclaimed Korean artist

 

Ha Chong-Hyun: Retrospective, on view September 25, 2026–January 25, 2027, at the Asian Art Museum, is the first major North American museum exhibition by pioneering Korean contemporary artist Ha Chong-Hyun. The exhibition features more than 50 paintings — including two new works completed as recently as 2025 — tracing Ha’s creative evolution over more than six decades. 

 

Ha Chong-Hyun: Retrospective is guest curated by eminent Seoul-based scholar and curator Sunjung Kim. Currently the Artistic Director of Art Sonje Center in Seoul and the chair of ICOM (International Council of Museums) Republic of Korea, Kim served as President of the Gwangju Biennale Foundation (2017–2021) and commissioner of the Korean Pavilion at the 51st Venice Biennale.  

 

 

Conjunction 25-19, 2025, by Ha Chong-Hyun. Oil on hemp cloth. Photo by Chunho An

 

Born in 1935 during Japanese colonial rule and coming of age in the aftermath of the Korean War, Ha developed his practice in a country marked by upheaval, scarcity, and rapid transformation. These conditions are embedded in the structure and materials of his work — as in his frequent use of industrial burlap sacks, once used to ship rice to South Korea after the war, as canvases.  

 

Works from the early 1960s introduce an artist beginning to test the limits of conventional painting, as Ha rejects composition in favor of physical exploration: thick paint layered onto canvas, bundles of thread embedded into surfaces, and passages scorched by flame. As Korea underwent rapid industrialization, Ha’s visual language shifted. Works from the White Paper on Urban Planning series translate the expanding infrastructure of cities into bold grids and radiating lines. A founding member of the Korean Avant-Garde Association (AG) in 1969, Ha entered a charged environment shaped by political repression and artistic experimentation; the stacks of censored newspapers and blank pages in Counter-Phase (1971) quietly register the constraints of the period. 

 

 

Conjunction 74-26, 1974, by Ha Chong-Hyun. © The Museum of Modern Art

 

Ha’s breakthrough arrived with the Conjunction series, begun in 1974. Here, Ha developed his signature “back-pressure” method: applying thick oil paint to the reverse of his burlap canvas until it breaks through the fabric’s coarse weave to the front, carrying with it the marks of pressure, resistance, and time. 

 

“For Ha, painting is not about illusion or representation,” said exhibition curator Kim. “It is about encounter — between the artist’s body and the material, between pressure and release. That encounter is what gives the work its enduring power.” 

 

While many of Ha’s works share the restrained palettes and serial mark-making of his contemporaries in the early 1970s Dansaekhwa (monochrome painting) movement, his output is set apart by its physical intensity.  

 

 

Naissance-B, 1967, by Ha Chong-Hyun. Oil and collage on canvas. Ha Chong-Hyun Art Center. Photo by Sangtae Kim

 

As the Conjunction series unfolds, surfaces become modular and spatial, engaging light, movement, and perception. Painting here is inseparable from construction — cutting, wrapping, and assembling — opening new possibilities for how a painting occupies space. In the 2010s, Ha began incorporating vivid primary colors, expanding beyond the restrained palette of Dansaekhwa toward a more contemporary language. In Ha’s most recent works, charred materials and ash merge with paint in compositions animated by assertive colors.  

 

“Ha Chong-Hyun’s work reshapes how we understand abstraction — as a visceral experience, more than a purely visual language,” said Soyoung Lee, The Barbara Bass Bakar Director and CEO of the Asian Art Museum. “This exhibition reveals an artist who expanded the possibilities of painting and embodied the realities of his time and place.” 

 

The retrospective also places Ha within a broader global context. Working in parallel with figures such as Donald Judd and Agnes Martin, he shares an interest in repetition and materiality, but his work diverges in its embrace of visible labor and imperfection. Where Western Minimalism often sought industrial precision, Ha’s surfaces retain vulnerability — each mark a trace of effort and resistance. 

 

 

Work C, 1962. By Ha Chong-Hyun. Oil and collage on canvas. Ha Chong-Hyun Art Center. Photo by Sangtae Kim

 

Seen in full, Ha Chong-Hyun: Retrospective unfolds as a sustained inquiry into what painting can be when pushed — physically and conceptually — beyond its limits. It is also a reminder that the story of postwar abstraction is neither singular nor Western, but global. 

 

A leading institution presenting Asian and Asian diaspora artists, the Asian Art Museum is a fitting venue for this retrospective. With San Francisco celebrating the 50th anniversary of its sister city relationship with Seoul this year, this exhibition contributes to amplifying the impact of Korean art and culture in the Bay Area and globally.  

 

 

About Ha Chong-Hyun 

Ha Chong-Hyun has lived and worked in Seoul since graduating from Hongik University in 1959. Awarded an honorary doctorate degree from the institution, he served as Dean of the Fine Arts College at Hongik University (1990–1994) and later served as Director of the Seoul Museum of Art (2003–2006). His work has appeared in major Biennale exhibitions worldwide and at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Gwacheon; the Denver Art Museum; the Song Art Museum, Beijing; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Brooklyn Museum, New York; the Erarta Museum, St. Petersburg; the Art Institute of Chicago; and the Fondazione Mudima, Milan. His works are included in the permanent collections of the Guggenheim; the Art Institute of Chicago; M+, Hong Kong; the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima; and the Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul. 

 

 

*단색화 거장들 (5) 하종현(Ha Chong-Hyun, 1935-): 접합, 물감과 마포의 랑데부

*세계 미술계에 부는 한국 단색화 열풍 <1> 단색화의 태동에서 부활까지  

*세계 미술계에 부는 한국 단색화 열풍 <2> 크리스티 뉴욕 거장전(10/8-23) 

 

 

 

한류를 이해하는 33가지 코드: 방탄소년단, 기생충, 그리고 오징어 게임을 넘어서 

#29 K-Art 단색화 부활하다 The Revival of the Korean Monochrome Painting  

2010년대 세계 미술계는 한국의 모노크롬 추상화 '단색화(Dansaekhwa)'를 재발견했다. 1970년대 독재 지하에서 시작한 박서보, 윤형근, 정상화, 정창섭, 하종현 화백 등 단색화가들은 작고했거나, 이제 황혼의 나이에 전성기를 맞고 있다. 메트로폴리탄뮤지엄, 구겐하임뮤지엄, 필라델피아뮤지엄 등 미국의 주요 미술관에서 한국 미술 특별전이 이어지고 있으며, 서울은 이제 세계 미술의 메카로 발돋움했다.  

https://www.nyculturebeat.com/index.php?mid=Focus&document_srl=4089137  

 

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#29 K-Art: The Revival of the Korean Monochrome Painting  

In the 2010s, the global art community experienced a renaissance in Korean monochrome abstraction known as 'Dansaekhwa.' Monochromatic painters, who emerged during Korea's era of dictatorship in the 1970s, now find themselves in their prime during the twilight of their careers. I explored the history of Dansaekhwa and the masters such as the late Yun Hyong-keun, late Chung Chang-sup, late Park Seo-Bo and Chung Sang-Hwa, Ha Chong Hyun. Special exhibitions of Korean art are continuing at major art museums in the United States such as the Metropolitan Museum, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Philadelphia Museum. Furthermore, Seoul has now emerged as a global art mecca.  

https://www.nyculturebeat.com/index.php?mid=Zoom&document_srl=4124933