Lot 674: Park Sookeun (1916-1964)

Park Sookeun (1916-1964)
Two seated women, 1964
Signed in hangul, Sookeun, inscribed on verso in Roman letters, Park Soo Keun 1964 and in hangul, Park Sookeun
Oil and mixed media on board, framed
7 1/8 x 9½in. (18.2 x 24.1cm.)
Paper label affixed to verso of Bando Art Gallery, Bando Hotel, Seoul, Korea

THE PROPERTY OF AN AMERICAN PRIVATE COLLECTION

This painting is a highlight of a collection owned by an American who lived in Hong Kong in the 1960s. The collector frequently travelled to Seoul, Tokyo and Manila, purchasing this painting from Park Sookeun's dealer shortly after it was painted.

The two seated women wear traditional Korean clothing (hanbok).

Sookeun's body of work is thought to be quite small, perhaps no more than 400 paintings. His career was cut short by his premature death from cirrhosis of the liver at the age of fifty-one in 1965. During the past seventeen years, since Christie's, New York, began selling his work, he has become the most sought-after modern Korean master.
Park Sookeun paintings are unique. Modest in scale, somber and roughly textured, they are at first glance unassuming and unpretentious. But it is is these very qualities, combined with the abstract, simplified rendering of his idyllic subject matter--scenes of everyday life--that give his works their power and poetry.

Sookeun's work was widely appreciated by Americans stationed in Seoul during the 1960s. Now it is prized by Korean collectors and museums as well. The Bando Gallery at the Choson Hotel began exhibiting his paintings in 1965, selling them for nominal sums to clients who were predominantly Americans.

Twenty 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 villages, 25 October, 1994, lot 78; Three women and child, 26 April, 1995, lot 77; Farm houses, 26 March, 1996, lot 67; Men smoking, 31 October, 1996, lot 110; Jobless, 23 March, 1999, lot 311 and 18 September, 2001, lot 333; Mother and child, 15 September, 1999, 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; Han il (Leisure time), 24 March, 2003, lot 326; Three women seated in the marketplace, 16 September, 2003, lot 430; Seated woman and jar, 23 March, 2004, lot 357; Mother, child and two women; Coming home from market, 18 March, 2008, lots 46 and 469; Figures in a landscape, 18 September, 2008, lot 401, and Three women, 17 September, 2009, lot 1158.

END OF SALE