Park Suk-won, who entered the Sculpture Department of Hongik University in 1960, made his debut as an artist as a college student when he participated in Korean Art Exhibition with his work entitled ‘Hope’ in 1961.
He was awarded at the 1 Young Artist Award in 1962 and participated in the 5 Paris Biennale in 1966. He also won the National Assembly President Prize at the Korean Art Exhibition for two consecutive years in 1968 and 1969, and in 1969 he participated in the 10 San Paolo Biennaleas he established himself as a promising sculptor whore presented Korea already in his 20s.
At college Park mastered the fundamentals of sculpture as he studied the techniques to represent realistically the human body. In his second year he participated in the Korean Art Exhibition with the plaster figure entitled ‘Hope’(1961), and this work shows a slight simplification of the human body but overall it is a realistic description of a female nude, which could be easily found at the Korean Art Exhibition of that time.
‘Pose’, with which he participated in the next year’s Korean Art Exhibition, shows the same tendency. The movement of the human body is more emphasized in this work than in ‘Hope’, and the distant look of the figure indicates his interest in the employment of space. Nonetheless, it is still a plaster work that portrays the human body in a realistic way.
It is around 1962 that a change occurred in the artistic language of Park. Besides ‘Pose’, which is a female nude whose mode corresponded to the academic criteria, heal so showed ‘Work 8’, an abstract iron sculpture that use the techniques of welded in the Korean Art Exhibition.
Park(A South Korea Sculptor PARK SUK WON,조각가 박석원,朴石元,PARK SUK WON,한국현대추상조각 선각자 박석원,박석원 작가,한국현대추상조각 선구자 박석원)was not the first artist who participated in the Korean Art Exhibition with iron welded sculpture.
In 1957 Kim In-tae and Pil Joo-kwang, who graduated from Hongik University and Jeon Sang-beom and Song Young-soo, who graduated from Seoul National University hadal ready shown welded sculptures.
It is in the second half of the 1950s when iron welded sculpture, which was popular in the West after World War II, was introduced to the artists of Korea. Kim Jeong-sook went to the U. S. in1955 to study welded sculpture and started to teach the sculptural techniques of welded at Hongik University during the spring semester of 1957.
In addition, young artists could find a way to produce ‘modern sculpture’ as they experienced the welded sculptures exhibited at ‘Eight Contemporary Artists from the U. S.’, which was held at Deoksugung in May 1957, and those that were introduced in a Japanese art magazine entitled Misool Soocheop.
It is said that Parke’s active production of welded sculpture in the 1960s was influenced by his teacher Kim Jeong-sook but his interest in iron sculpture was indeed triggered by the senior artists such as Park Jong-bae and Lee Jong-kak who were making welded sculptures at the studio in the college.
△Kim Yisoon, Art History(김이순 미술사)