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Michael
Michael
@mdstamper.bsky.social
8 months ago
"Portrait of the Dancer Choe Seunghui" depicts world-famous Korean performer Choe Seunghui performing a Korean fan dance. Among the numerous portraits of artists he met in Pyongyang, Soviet Russian-Korean artist Pen Varlen notably depicted the dancer Choi in several works. Choi Seung-hee (최승희) was a ground-braking Korean modern dancer. Choi is hailed as an important figure of early modern dance in Korea, Japan, and China who gained worldwide fame in the 1930s. Choi was the first female dancer in colonial Korea to perform outside of her country, even though Japan did not allow for dances to express resentment or resistance towards the Japanese Empire. In 1946, Choi Seung-hee and her husband, An Mak, defected to North Korea. Her work in North Korea received strong support from Kim Il-sung. Despite her initial success in North Korea, Choi's husband was purged from the communist party in 1959, and she was "purged" in 1967. She reportedly died in a concentration camp (18호 관리소) in 1969. In 2003, the North Korean government built a monument proclaiming her a "People's Actress." Pen Varlen was born in Primorsky Krai, Russia, as a member of the ethnic Korean diaspora in Russia and Central Asia known as Goryeoin. He studied art in Saint Petersburg, where he spent the rest of his life as an artist and educator. His life and art penetrated not only the vicissitudes of colonialization, national division, warfare, and ideological conflict in modern and contemporary Korea, but also those of Russia, which underwent the communist revolution, WWI and WWII, totalitarianism, the Cold War, perestroika, and glasnost. In 1953, Pen became the first Korean appointed as associate professor at the Repin Art Institute; in the same year, he also accepted a visiting professorship at the Pyongyang Art College that lasted nearly fifteen months, allowing him to play a key role in restoring the North Korean art scene left in ruins following the war.

"Portrait of the Dancer Choe Seunghui" depicts world-famous Korean performer Choe Seunghui performing a Korean fan dance. Among the numerous portraits of artists he met in Pyongyang, Soviet Russian-Korean artist Pen Varlen notably depicted the dancer Choi in several works. Choi Seung-hee (최승희) was a ground-braking Korean modern dancer. Choi is hailed as an important figure of early modern dance in Korea, Japan, and China who gained worldwide fame in the 1930s. Choi was the first female dancer in colonial Korea to perform outside of her country, even though Japan did not allow for dances to express resentment or resistance towards the Japanese Empire. In 1946, Choi Seung-hee and her husband, An Mak, defected to North Korea. Her work in North Korea received strong support from Kim Il-sung. Despite her initial success in North Korea, Choi's husband was purged from the communist party in 1959, and she was "purged" in 1967. She reportedly died in a concentration camp (18호 관리소) in 1969. In 2003, the North Korean government built a monument proclaiming her a "People's Actress." Pen Varlen was born in Primorsky Krai, Russia, as a member of the ethnic Korean diaspora in Russia and Central Asia known as Goryeoin. He studied art in Saint Petersburg, where he spent the rest of his life as an artist and educator. His life and art penetrated not only the vicissitudes of colonialization, national division, warfare, and ideological conflict in modern and contemporary Korea, but also those of Russia, which underwent the communist revolution, WWI and WWII, totalitarianism, the Cold War, perestroika, and glasnost. In 1953, Pen became the first Korean appointed as associate professor at the Repin Art Institute; in the same year, he also accepted a visiting professorship at the Pyongyang Art College that lasted nearly fifteen months, allowing him to play a key role in restoring the North Korean art scene left in ruins following the war.

무용가 최승희 초상 (Portrait of the Dancer Choi Seunghee) by 변월룡 / Pen Varlen aka Byun Wol-ryong (Soviet Russian-Korean) - Oil on canvas / 1954 - National Museum of Modern & Contemporary Art (Seoul, Korea) #WomenInArt #art #MMCA #ArtText #국립현대미술관 #KoreanArt #변월룡 #PenVarlen #ByunWol-ryong #womensart #dancer

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