Oil on canvas, circa 1960. 510x582 mm; 20 1/4x23 inches. Signed in oil, lower right recto.
Ex-collection private collection, New York.
Kim (1917-2014) was a Korean-American artist, born in Changnyeong, Korea. He was among the first of a generation of Korean artists who moved to the United States in the 1950s and is one of the earliest-known Korean artists to permanently work and reside in New York. Kim's Eastern and Western artistic training enabled him to develop a unique visual fusion of both traditions while he explored different styles throughout his career, from Abstract Expressionism in the 1950s, to realist still-life drawings in the 1970s and large-scale Neo-Expressionistic figurative and allegorical works from the 1980s onward. Kim was immersed in the downtown New York art scene of the 1950s, interacting with many of the New York School artists active at the time. In this environment, he pursued Abstract Expressionism with a lyrical, sweeping, calligraphic style, evinced by the current masterful oil painting.
Among the downtown art scene he met his future wife, the artist Sylvia Wald (1915-2011). Together with the artist Lenore Tawney, they purchased a house at 37 East 4th Street, which they renovated with artist studios and gallery. In 1978, Kim and Wald purchased the building at 417 Lafayette Street, where they lived and worked until their deaths. They established the Sylvia Wald and Po Kim Art Gallery, a non-profit art foundation, which is still located there today.
