Park Seo-Bo - Self Titled Perrotin Monograph

Park Seo-Bo is a seminal figure in Korean contemporary art and one of the founding members of the Dansaekhwa monochrome movement, a synthesis between traditional Korean spirit and Western abstraction, which emerged in the early 1970s in postwar Korea and has gained international recognition since. In Park Seo-Bo’s paintings, process and discipline prevail—a departure from the artist’s early aesthetics, which were inspired by art informel, a French movement that arose parallel to American abstract expressionism during World War II and became prevalent in Europe throughout the 1950s. As early as 1957, he helped establish the Hyun-Dae Artists Association around the principles of art informel, the gestural and abstract techniques of which, like those of action painting and color-field in the United States, would enable young Korean artists to express their anguish in the immediate aftermath of the Korean War.