Ku Pon-Ung

A man stands at an angle with a pipe in his mouth, eyes sunk in shadow, the brushwork rough. This is Portrait of a Friend, believed to show the poet Yi Sang. A childhood accident injured Ku Pon-Ung's spine and left him in poor health for life. He brought Fauvism and Expressionism into Korean painting early, learned in Japan, and painted figures by twisting form and pushing colour hard. In a period when the decorous portrait was the rule, his surfaces are conspicuously violent. He moved between literature and art in Yi Sang's circle. Few works survive. He died in 1953.