Kwon Ok-Yon achieved a distinctive synthesis between formal experimentation in Western art and an East Asian sensibility. In the 1950s, he explored inner emotion through figurative paintings of human figures and still lifes, while during his time in Paris in the 1960s—when Art Informel dominated the European art scene—he engaged deeply with non-formal abstraction and the expressive potential of texture. By simplifying and restructuring the forms of objects, he transformed the formal qualities of vernacular motifs into an abstract order, while thick impasto and restrained gray tonalities create a sense of balance and spatial depth.

From the 1970s onward, motifs such as female figures and landscapes, which had appeared i...