Lot 326: Park Sookeun (1914-1965)

Han il (Leisure time) Signed in hangul, Sookeun Oil on canvas, framed 13 x 20 7/8in. (33 x 53cm.) Paper label affixed to verso, Park Sookeun, Changshin-dong 393-1, Han il NOTES Five men in traditional Korean clothing are seated around a chess board in intense concentration. Sookeun's paintings are unique. Small, and roughly textured, they are at first glance unassuming and unpretentious. But it is these very qualities, combined with the abstract, simplified rendering of his idyllic subject matter--traditional country scenes--that give his works their power and poetry. For another smaller painting with a very similar composition, also titled Leisure time and dating from the 1950s, see Park Sookeun (Seoul: Gallery Hyundai, 2002), color plate page 23. Sookeun's work was widely appreciated by Americans stationed in Seoul after the Korean war. Now it is prized by Korean collectors and museums as well. The Bando Gallery in the Choson Hotel in Seoul began exhibiting his paintings in 1956, selling them for a nominal sum to clients who were predominately Americans. The artist's career was cut short by his premature death at the age of fifty-one in 1965. During the past ten years, since Christie's New York began selling his work, he has become the most sought-after modern Korean master. Thirteen paintings by Park Sookeun have been sold at Christie's, New York: Farmers, 27 April, 1993, lot 45; Dancers, 17 November, 1993, lot 121; Woman beneath a tree, 27 April, 1994, lot 101; Country village, 25 October, 1994, lot 78; Three women and child, 26 April, 1995, lot 77; Farmhouses, 26 March, 1996, lot 67; Men smoking, 31 October, 1996, lot 110; The jobless, 23 March, 1999, lot 311 and 15 October, 2001, lot 333; Mother and child, 15 September, 1999, lot 384; Four women and child, 23 March, 2000, lot 379; Mother and child walking under trees, 19 September, 2000, lot 410; Winter, 22 March 2002, lot 223; Woman pounding grain, 18 September, 2002, lot 432.