Kim Whanki (1913-1974) Untitled, circa 1960s Oil on canvas 20 x 16 inches (50.8 x 40.6 cm) Signed lower right: Kim Inscribed on the reverse: H11703 PROVENANCE: The artist; Arts International Gallery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Private collection, Gladwyne, Pennsylvania, acquired from the above, circa 1966-67; Briggs Auction, Garnet Valley, Pennsylvania, June 3, 2022, lot 430A (as attributed); Acquired by the present owner from the above. EXHIBITED: [Possibly]Arts International Gallery, Philadelphia, "Lagniappe," December 1966-January 6, 1967. RELATED LITERATURE: "5 Artists Give 'Lagniappe Show,'"The Philadelphia Inquirer, December 11, 1966, Calendar of Art Events in Philadelphia Area. NOTE: The Whanki Museum has confirmed that this painting is verified in the Archive of Kim Whanki. The lot is accompanied by a certificate from the Whanki Foundation/Whanki Museum issued on April 24, 2026. A pioneer of Korean modern art, Kim Whanki developed a distinct abstract language in which the natural landscape and cultural traditions of his homeland remained enduring points of reference. Across a career that took him from Korea to Tokyo, Paris, and New York, Whanki explored how familiar subjects could be distilled into increasingly independent arrangements of color, line, and form, eventually culminating in the all-over-dot-paintings for which he was best known. The present works, recently rediscovered, date from an important experimental period during the New York years in the 1960s. Poised between representation and abstraction, their repeated marks, varied opacites, and carefully balanced structures reveal an artist approaching a breakthrough, discovering new expressive possibilities within a vocabulary of seemingly simple elements. Born in 1913 on Kijwa Island, off Korea's southwestern coast, Whanki pursued his artistic education at Nihon University in Tokyo during the 1930s. There, his exposure to Japan's avant-garde circles introduced him to alternatives to academic representation. Returning to Korea in 1937, he became an important advocate for modern art, helping establish the New Realism Group with Yoo Youngkuk and Lee Kyusang in 1947. Whanki's time in Paris from 1956 to 1959 further sharpened this relationship between modernist experimentation and cultural memory. Mountains, birds, the moon, and porcelain jars provided a recurring repertoire through which he investigated the expressive potential of simplified contours and broad passages of color. These subjects offered more than recognizable emblems of Korea: their curves, silhouettes, and spatial relationships became the foundations of a personal pictorial language. Distance from his homeland perhaps gave renewed significance to its familiar forms, allowing remembered landscapes and cherished objects to coexist within increasingly abstract compositions. In 1963, directly following his participation in the Seventh São Paulo Biennale, Whanki moved to New York, where he received support through a Rockefeller-funded grant. Already an established artist in Korea, he entered a period of sustained experimentation in the US that would occupy the remaining decade of his life. His investigations encompassed gouache, collage, papier-mâché, and oil on unconventional surfaces, including newspaper. By the late 1960s, he was exploring intricate arrangements of dots on both newspaper and traditional Korean hanji, developing the repeated marks that would become central to his celebrated all-over dot paintings. This evolution involved a searching reconsideration of how individual touches of paint could organize an entire surface. Such artistic developments unfolded amid the personal challenges of establishing a life abroad. Personal writings from his early New York years convey homesickness and hardships. The present works were originally offered through Arts International, a detail of their provenance that situates them within the American circulation of his work during this formative period. These paintings illuminate an ephemeral and pivotal moment for the artist as he lived and worked in New York City. Their dots and short strokes foreshadow the all-over fields of his mature New York practice, yet each composition possesses its own balance of concentrated activity and quiet space. Color establishes relationships across the surface, while the changing scale and spacing of the marks guide the eye between intimate detail and the work as a whole. Within this interplay lies a defining quality of Whanki's achievement: an abstraction capable of sustaining the feeling of remembered places and familiar objects even as their recognizable outlines recede. The result is a pictorial world at once carefully constructed and deeply lyrical. HID12401132022 © 2026 Heritage Auctions | All Rights Reserved www.HA.com/TexasAuctioneerLicenseNotice

[Possibly]Arts International Gallery, Philadelphia, "Lagniappe," December 1966-January 6, 1967.

The artist; Arts International Gallery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Private collection, Gladwyne, Pennsylvania, acquired from the above, circa 1966-67; Briggs Auction, Garnet Valley, Pennsylvania, June 3, 2022, lot 430A (as attributed); Acquired by the present owner from the above.

Condition report available upon request.