Park Seo-Bo is a seminal figure in Korean contemporary art and one of the founding members of the Dansaekhwa monochrome* movement, a synthesis between traditional Korean spirit and Western abstraction, which emerged in the early 1970s in postwar Korea and has gained international recognition since.

Although the Korean monochrome movement has never been defined with a manifesto, the artists affiliated with Dansaekhwa, including Chung Chang-Sup and Lee Ufan, are commonly known for their use of a neutral palette (namely white, beige, and black), their material emphasis on pictorial components and fabrics, and their gestural and systematic process.

In Park Seo-Bo’s paintings, process and discipline prevail—a ...