Life Territory
Life Map
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.
Four Passages
Four passages
Each geographical passage also changed the grammar of his painting.
Seogwipo
His birthplace and the inward point to which he returned throughout his life.
Japan
At the Osaka School of Fine Arts, under Terauchi Manjirō, and through the Nitten and Kōfūkai, he mastered form.
Seoul
Portraits, the precise colours of the Biwon, and life in the Korean art world after his return.
Jeju
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.
The records that remain
Works, voices, documents and places testify to one another and keep the painter’s world open.
Life & Records · Six collections
Life & Records
Chronology
Life, exhibitions, awards, works and plates on one line of time.
Timeline → VOICEOral History Map
The painter’s voice across seven sessions and fourteen hours in 2004–2005.
Oral history → PLACESPlaces of a Life
Eleven places, from the birthplace in Seohong-dong to the family grave in Hawon-dong.
Places → OFFICIAL BIOGRAPHYExile and Blessing
Read Byun Shi-Ji’s life and artistic world.
Read → PLATESSource Photo Archive
Plates of works, documents and press, gathered by year. Tap a photo to open it at full size; the year leads to that point of the Chronology.
Plates → EXHIBITIONSExhibition Records
Every exhibition record drawn from the precision timeline. The year links to its place in the Chronology.
Records →