“Han Youngsup presented Dancheong and Concrete at his first solo exhibition, in 1969. A daring white space bisects the canvas, which is painted with bluish hues and small, colorfully patterned pieces resembling dan-cheong, a form of decoration seen on traditional Korean architecture and folk objects. The simple yet sensuous division of the composition at its center calls to mind the practice of other contemporary artists of the 1960s who were devoted to geometric abstraction. However, Han wished to express a distinct form of artistic creation based on “Korean-ness” and Korean tradition. The title of the present painting signals his desire to do so by bringing together indigenous dancheong and the most prominent building material of his time, concrete. The combination expressed what Han sought to achieve, a union of the traditional and the modern through material and form. Indeed, Han himself once stated that his work would be “founded on tradition and will be a new creative artistic practice.”1 Accordingly, he joined a handful of other abstract painters among his contemporaries who introduced traditional color palettes and objects to their canvases, thereby fostering a creative process built on Korean foundations.
Han and other artists’ pursuit of the traditional within the medium of painting diverged somewhat from that of others who sought to escape the boundaries of the two-dimensional plane through avant-garde performance, objects, and installation art. The trend toward the latter led to the disbanding of the Nonkkol Group, 2 in which Han had taken part beginning in 1964, and the founding of the Sinjeon Group without him. In 1967, members of Sinjeon Group, together with those in the artists’ groups Origin and Zero (Mu) Group, participated in the Union Exhibition of Young Korean Artists, departing defiantly from the dominant stylistic trends of the Korean artistic establishment.”