Kim Byungki, who has been painting ever since the 1930s, is a veteran artist who has left important footprints in the history of Korean modern and contemporary art, through his experiments with contemporary form in Korea and abroad. Artist Kim began studying abstraction after his encounter with abstract painting and surrealist art during his education in Japan; he discovered calligraphic formative beauty in the styles of Informel in the 1950s; and thereafter he created a new and unique formative language of his own. Unlike the abstract painting of the West, emphasising materiality, Kim Byungki has stressed narrative elements. This intention can be seen in his work titles, such as Crucifixion (1954) and Street Tree (1965). His interest in the narrative later led him toward figurative painting, which began to show in his work from the 1970s. Some of the common formative characteristics in his works, traversing abstract and figurative, are their dynamic brush strokes and straight lines resembling traditional ink paintings. The straight lines symbolise the urban landscape, portraying the image of Korea resulting from rapid economic growth, through the city skyline thickly filled with high-rise buildings. Some of his works show moderately curved lines, which are believed to symbolise the roof tiles of traditional houses and the ridges of mountains. Similar to the dichotomous structure of abstract and figurative, city and nature also are contrasting concepts. Kim Byungki strives to break down the boundaries of such differences. That is to say, he does not intend to portray harmony through contrast, but to capture the tight tension of the contrast in his picture-planes.
