Korean Painting - Artists Under The Japanese Invasion and Occupation Period

Artists Under The Japanese Invasion and Occupation Period

Korean artists from the middle 1880s til 1945, when Korea was freed by the allies after the unconditional surrender of Japan, had a very difficult time.

From the 1880s onward, the Japanese invaders of Korea attempted both to obliterate and eliminate Korean art itself through looting and destruction of Korean artistic works, and continued as they closed Korean schools of art, torched Korean paintings of Korean subjects, and forced those few artists left to paint Japanese subjects in Japanese styles and so seed Japanese art as the art of the Koreas forever. Japan held an exhibition of the Korea art and produced many Koreans young artists such as Park Su-geun.

To this date there has not been a retrospective show of the hidden art under Japanese occupation, or a discussion of the conflicts between those who were forced into compromise under Japanese artistic demands. It is an issue of great sensitivity, with artists who studied and worked in Japan and painted in the Japanese style forced into self-defense and justification of compromise without other alternatives.

Bridging the late Joseon dynasty and the Japanese occupation period were noteworthy artists such as:

• Chi Un-Yeong (1853–1936)

and others.