Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA) has opened "Yoo Youngkuk: A Mountain Within Me," the most comprehensive retrospective to date of pioneering Korean abstract artist Yoo Youngkuk (1916–2002), running through October 25, 2026. Organized with the Yoo Youngkuk Art Foundation and The Chosun Ilbo, the exhibition features over 170 works and archival materials, including previously unpublished pieces spanning painting, relief, photography, and drawing. It inaugurates SeMA's new "Korean Modern Masters" series, which aims to reassess Korean modern art from a contemporary perspective, and uses a non-linear structure pivoting around 1964 to explore Yoo's lifelong abstraction of the mountain motif.
The exhibition matters because it positions Yoo Youngkuk as a figure who maintained his commitment to abstraction through Korea's turbulent 20th century—Japanese colonial rule, the Korean War, democratization, and rapid economic growth—making his work both a historical document and a formal achievement. By launching the "Korean Modern Masters" series with Yoo, SeMA signals a renewed institutional effort to elevate Korean modernists in global art discourse. The show also raises timely questions about artistic creation in an era of digital and AI disruption, framing Yoo's painting as a return to fundamental creative inquiry.