Ch'oe Chae-dŏk (b. 1916) 
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"Pavilion on a hill", 32.6 x 40 cm, oil on canvas, not dated




Ch'oe Chae-dŏk (b. 1916)

Ch'oe, the scion of a landlord family from Sanch'ŏng, South Kyŏngsang Province, came to espouse a leftist political orientation through his close friends, Yi K'wae-dae and Kim Man-hyŏng, while studying at the Pacific Art School in Tokyo. Since 1937 he has participated a few times in the national exhibition (Sŏnjŏn) and held group exhibits with his former schoolmates from Japan. Like many other Korean artists, he was engaged in the production of war propaganda art during the early 1940s. After Liberation Ch'oe joined the Painting Committee of the Korean Fine Arts League and the Korean Artists Union in 1947 (not in 1950, as South Korean publications claim). In the fall of 1950, he went north with the retreating Northern army. Information about his career in the North remains unclear, but several of his works were shown in national exhibits in P'yŏngyang during the 1950s and 1960s and praised by the leading art ideologue Mun Hak-su. 


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