May 10 -June 8, 2001

Gallery Korea at the Korean Cultural Center New York
(460 Park Ave. 6th Floor, New York, NY 10022)

Centennial Exhibition

LOUIS PAL CHANG
(1901 - 2001)

Gallery Korea is pleased to announce an exhibition of paintings celebrating the centenary of Louis Chang Pal’s birth. The exhibition will open on May 10 and continue until June 8.

As Chairman of the Department of Art and later as the first Dean of the College of Art at Seoul National University, Louis Chang Pal taught most of the major Korean artists active today. He also taught at the University of Pittsburgh as an exchange professor in the 1950s. Following his retirement from Seoul National University in 1961, he resettled in the United States.

This exhibition is selected from work produced in the thirty years that Louis Chang Pal lived in America. The oil paintings and work on paper reflect the universal spirit of an artist whose taste and techniques transcend traditional distinctions between East and West. Included in the exhibition will be portraits and abstractions as well as religious paintings, calligraphy and landscapes painted in the literati tradition of Asia.

It is significant that these works in various media express both the aesthetic sensibility and the spiritual convictions of this deeply religious artist. His facility with modern and traditional styles is reflected in the convergence of calligraphy and abstraction in one group of paintings. In a different series, his melding of East and West is expressed in the juxtaposition of traditional Korean costumes with Christian religious iconography. Louis Chang Pal passed away on April 8 a few days after his one-hundredth birthday. He never retired from art and continued exploring new avenues for expression until the end of his life.