Young Il Ahn
Water
2015

About the Item

Young-Il Ahn developed a distinctive oeuvre defined by meticulous, abstract paintings that explore his relationship with beauty, nature, and music. The most famous body of work by Ahn, the Water series, has been associated with Dansaekhwa, an aesthetic position specific to Korea characterized by the expression of natural processes through a monochromatic palette. In Korea, his first mentors were his father, who was a painter and art teacher, and his mother, a musician. His early paintings tended towards expressionist figuration, but after relocating to Los Angeles in 1966,he became enamored with the Southern California sunlight. The early California paintings by Ahn were semi-abstract, light-filled studies of beach umbrellas, sails, birds, and musicians. His life in California included frequent long fishing trips in the waters between Santa Monica and Catalina Island. On one such trip, his boat became engulfed in a dense fog. When the fog finally lifted, the sea around him was calm and shimmering. Ahn wrote of that moment in his autobiography, And still it flows towards me: “My favorite colors from nature stretched to infinity. The sunlight crashed and reflected against the water every moment, dispersing splendid and sparkling colors in layers.” The experience inspired Ahn to create his Water series, on which he worked for over 30 years, until his death. Ahn had his first solo exhibition in Tokyo at the age of six. While in middle school in 1949, he won the First Korean National Art Exhibition, and in 1950 he took the exhibition’s Special Prize. Ahn was included in an invitational exhibition at the World House Gallery in New York in 1957; earned his BFA from Seoul National University in 1958; and in 1959 had his first American solo show, at Hull House in Chicago. In 2015, the Long Beach Museum of Art held his first solo museum exhibition, A Memoir of Water. In 2018, he became the first Korean-American painter to receive a solo exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). Ahn’s paintings are in the collections of LACMA, the Long Beach Museum of Art, and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea.

Creator:

Young Il Ahn (Korean)

Creation Year:

2015

Dimensions:

Height: 23.86 in (60.6 cm)Width: 19.69 in (50 cm)

Medium:

Acrylic

Period:

2010-

Condition:

Gallery Location: