Chung Sang-hwa, monochrome painting pioneer, dies at 94
Published: 28 Jan. 2026, 16:11
![Chung Sang-hwa works in his studio in Yeoju, Gyeonggi, in 2023. [GALLERY HYUNDAI]](https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/data/photo/2026/01/28/4c5a1838-0bca-42b2-b77f-01f407808e1d.jpg)
Chung Sang-hwa works in his studio in Yeoju, Gyeonggi, in 2023. [GALLERY HYUNDAI]
Chung Sang-hwa, a pioneering figure in Korea’s Dansaekhwa, or monochrome painting, died on Wednesday. He was 94.
“I’ve done everything I wanted to do as a painter,” Chung said in a 2023 interview with renowned curator Hans Ulrich Obrist. “But in fact, even at this moment, I’ve got a lot of regrets that I should have done a little better. There is no such thing as satisfaction in the human mind. There is no such thing as completion.
"But I feel the environment around me. I am embedded in my worldview — I am intrinsic to the worldview that I have formulated. It doesn’t matter if it is good or bad. That’s what an artist does. Art, in a way, is about beginning something endless. It’s not about making an end. It’s about doing something endless."
Chung was born in 1932 in Yeongdeok County, North Gyeongsang. He began studying art while attending Masan Middle School, where he joined the art club in his second year and began practicing plaster cast drawing. By his third year, he had won the top prize at the South Gyeongsang student art exhibition.
As a high school student, he took part in the inaugural Masan art exhibition, which featured artists like Moon Shin and Choi Young-rim. He also joined Heukmahoe, the home of Masan’s first modern art group.
He entered the College of Fine Arts at Seoul National University in 1953, then operating in Busan due to the Korean War (1950-53). After graduating in 1957, he began his career as a teacher at Incheon Normal School.
![Chung Sang-hwa during his time at Seoul National University in the 1950s [GALLERY HYUNDAI]](https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/data/photo/2026/01/28/f0f26975-afa4-47bb-a09b-472659962807.jpg)
Chung Sang-hwa during his time at Seoul National University in the 1950s [GALLERY HYUNDAI]
In the years that followed, he was a key member of the Hyundae Mihyup and Actuel groups, which led Korea’s avant-garde art scene — a movement of artists who experimented with new, unconventional forms and ideas that broke from tradition — at the time. He used loose, abstract painting styles to express the sense of loss, anxiety and fear that followed the war.
He held his first solo exhibition in 1962 at a public art space in central Seoul. The following year, architect Kim Chung-up invited him to take part as one of four young Korean artists in a group show at Yvon Lambert Gallery in Paris, alongside Park Seo-bo, Kim Chong-hak and Kwon Ok-yeon.
Chung spent time in Paris in 1967 before spending time in Kobe, Japan, from 1969 to 1977, where he completed the structural foundations of his signature grid-based monochrome works.
His process was labor-intensive and meditative. He cut canvas into strips, mounted and layered them with kaolin clay, allowed them to harden, removed and folded the canvas to create fractures, then filled, scraped and painted over them repeatedly — often laying white paint over more white, building subtle shifts in depth and texture.
After returning permanently to Korea in 1992, Chung retreated to his studio in Yeoju, Gyeonggi.
"An artist should speak through the work,” he once said.
![Chung Sang-hwa in 2014 [GALLERY HYUNDAI]](https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/data/photo/2026/01/28/181e6d24-7163-429c-b56d-ef83dd6b0302.jpg)
Chung Sang-hwa in 2014 [GALLERY HYUNDAI]
He held retrospective exhibitions at Musée d'art moderne et contemporain in France in 2011 and at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Korea in 2021. In 2020, he was inducted into the fine arts division of the National Academy of Arts.
His works are held in major collections including the Leeum Museum of Art in Yongsan District, central Seoul, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington and the M+ museum in Hong Kong.
The funeral altar is set up in Room 6 of the funeral hall at Seoul National University Hospital in central Seoul. The funeral procession will take place on Friday.
This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
BY KWON KEUN-YOUNG [[email protected]]
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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