[KS] Pre-1945 independence activist art?

[Andrew Logie]

Dear art historians,

I had a question from an art-historian student asking about art produced in the context of the anti-Japanese resistance and Manchuria-based guerilla movements. Off the top of my head, I couldn’t think of very much. What comes most immediately to mind is retrospectively produced minjung-type art of the 1980s. Presumably there must have been a few early painters, perhaps trained in Tokyo, or Germany, who alligned themselves with the resistance and perhaps ended up in Manchuria or beyond. And I’m guessing there would have been some Soviet trained Korean artists, too.

The only Soviet-Korean artist I know of is Pen Varlen 변월룡 (1916-1990), who moved to DPRK after the Korean War, however, the couple of examples I’ve seen of his work - “Girl in Red chŏgori” (1954), and etching “송정리” (1958) exhibited last year at Deoksugung Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art - are already from the 1950s and are not directly referencing the anti-Japanese resistance movement (though they’re very nice pictures).

Any thoughts or leads would be of interest.

sincerely
Andrew Logie 
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