Longevity,  162 X 162 cm, 2007.

   Master Artist Oh Seung-woo won awards at the National Painting Exhibition four times from 1957 to 1960 with his outstanding paintings flowing with brilliant colors. He has long been considered a representative artist in Korea’s Western painting world. He travelled all over the world to climb and paint a series of 100 mountains as well as numerous skyscrapers in large cities around the world for the past 10 years. Those paintings won him international fame.

Master Artist Oh Seung-woo

Most recently, he painted 10 symbols of longevity such as plants and animals including deer, turtles, old pine trees, bamboo, and cranes, among others. These symbols are considered to have lengthy life spans and have dominated the spiritual world of the Orient for ages, not only as symbols of longevity, but as symbols of eternal peace, beauty and utopia, most of all as expressions of prayers for longevity by humans, writes Publisher Elizabeth Oh of NewsWorld in her commentary on Oh’s art pieces. 

Oh’s longevity paintings make up mystic spaces, not existing spaces, in their gigantic scales and structures with overflowing vitality and strong original colors in harmony to make the surfaces of the canvasses emotionally moving.

 Longevity 130 X 130cm, 2005.

Powerful brush strokes and yet light-speed images moves around the canvasses fast as if in competition with one another. The subjects of his work that sing about the raptures of life brought about a new understanding and interpretation of the 10 longevity objects as a traditional Korean painting genre. It is an appropriate way of inheriting the value system trapped in the subjects and artist Oh’s work is truly a process of a spiritual search for such value.

The Oh Seung-woo Art Museum in Muan County in South Jeolla Province opened in 2003 and home to more than 170 of his valuable art pieces, is a travel course where many art lovers come to marvel at the masterpieces of the master artist who followed in the footsteps of his late father, Ji-ho. Oh’s two sons are also following the artistic family tradition. Oh is a member of the National Academy of Arts of the Republic of Korea and was a judge for the National Art Exhibition and was an invited artist of the grand art exhibition from 1961 at the age of 31 to 1980.

Art critic Shin Bong-seung, a member of the National Academy of Arts and also a famed scriptwriter, said of Oh’s work, “He transformed the fantasy world in a Western style into an Oriental style world of mysticism where fairies live with all things that mortal beings desire and poets and artists wanted to enter that mystic world and stay there.”

Longevity,  130 X 97 cm,2005 (photos : the Oh Seung-woo Art Museum in Muan County)

“Oh’s paintings of 10 symbols of longevity have all the images that pierce through the center of people and their lives with their mystic stories. The mystic stories make up limitless eternal order flow brilliantly. The sun, the source of all things on earth, removes confusion with its brilliance and passion in these fantastic artworks,” said the art critic.

Master Artist Oh Seung-woo and his wife stand before his work.

Art critic Oh Kwang-soo said, “Oh has worked on a single subject for a long time before moving on to the next one ever since his early years as an inimitable artist.  His art subject dealt with mountains in the 1980s for over 10 years, along with traditional folk themes, which he also took over for long time. Dealing with the same subject for over a decade meant that the artist tried to study the subject in detail including the cultural background, the inner sensibility through various sharp means.”