Born in Seogwipo in 1926, the painter crossed Japan and Seoul before returning to Jeju. His life is connected here through time, voice, place and works.
A life cannot be written in dates alone. Documents, works, the painter’s own voice and the places where he lived and worked must be read together.
Each geographical passage also changed the grammar of his painting.
His birthplace and the inward point to which he returned throughout his life.
At the Osaka School of Fine Arts, under Terauchi Manjirō, and through the Nitten and Kōfūkai, he mastered form.
Portraits, the precise colours of the Biwon, and life in the Korean art world after his return.
A homecoming at fifty. He discarded colour and technique as he knew them and formed a language of wind, dried-grass colour and the bent body.
Works, voices, documents and places testify to one another and keep the painter’s world open.
Enter the principal chronology and the 227-entry precision timeline.
Timeline →The painter’s voice across seven sessions and fourteen hours in 2004–2005.
Oral history →Eleven places, from the birthplace in Seohong-dong to the family grave in Hawon-dong.
Places →Read Byun Shi-Ji’s life and artistic world.
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