Youngkuk is among the most celebrated Korean artists today, but his oeuvre has not been internationally known until recently. Born in the coastal Uljin province of South Korea, he went to Japan in the 1930s to pursue his studies in painting in Tokyo and returned in the 1940s during the Pacific War. He held various jobs and roles before resuming his art practice in 1955.

When comparing his paintings from the 1940s-50s to some later ones, a significant aesthetic shift can be traced. Influenced by Japanese avant-garde groups and movements, Youngkuk began experimenting with abstraction in alignment with constructivist and futurist trends of the beginning of the twentieth century. In his early paintings, fragmentation, tension, and rigour are the common threads. Following the Korean War, Youngkuk cultivated a sort of strict, almost religious approach to artmaking, committed to an utterly reclusive lifestyle within the confines of his studio. Youngkuk was very adamant in the ways of creating and showing his production. After participating in the Korean section of the 7th São Paulo Biennial in 1963, he focused on solo shows, exhibiting his work regularly until his passing in 2002.

The exhibition at Querini Stampalia offers a privileged view of the artist’s formative period in the 1960s and 1970s, reflecting upon his meticulous use of colour, form, and shape in tandem with his authentic and nuanced interpretation of life and nature. Although he was already a highly experienced artist then, Youngkuk referred to this stage as his “learning phase”. The displayed paintings shed light on a continual learning exercise that permeated much of his practice, encouraging viewers to unravel an array of colour schemes and visual constructs.

A feeling of mysteriousness emanates from the paintings, wherein the mountains and the sea of his childhood in Uljin are beautifully depicted as symbolic motifs. And yet, while the linearity of the mountain and the horizontal flatness of the sea yield a rigid abstract composition, there is an atmosphere of sublimity that surrounds these pieces, conveying intimacy and comfort. Though the splendour of the mountains is intimidating and somewhat frightening, they are also welcoming and almost conversational. The peaks seem part of a large family, finally reunited and chatting with each other from above. Others are more elastic, expansive, and independent, and their different sizes and colours account for the diversity of the Korean nature and scenery.

Wandering through the galleries in the lowermost level, designed by renowned Italian architect Carlo Scarpa, I could sense the elegant harmony between Youngkuk’s geometric mountains and seas and Scarpa’s modernist garden and chambers, virtually submerged in the canals of Venice. An indoor natural landscape takes over the exhibition, and I was luckily invited to navigate through this mesmerising journey to the infinite.