Kim Tschang-yeul, Korea's 'water drop' painter, dies at 91 in Seoul

Kim Tschang-yeul, one of South Korea's best-known contemporary artists, died in Seoul in early January 2021 at the age of 91. He was celebrated around the world for his water drop paintings, in which glistening droplets sit on bare canvas with an almost photographic precision.

Born in 1929 in what is now North Korea, Kim built much of his career abroad. He spent decades in France and became closely linked with Paris, before later settling in South Korea and spending his final years on Jeju Island, where a museum devoted to his work opened in 2016. The water drop motif became his signature from the 1970s and he returned to it for the rest of his career.

His death mattered both as a cultural loss and as a market moment. Kim was seen as a central figure of Korean postwar abstraction and of the wider Dansaekhwa-era generation of artists, and collectors showed strong interest in his canvases afterwards. Works by him have since appeared regularly at Seoul auctions, which is why his name returns whenever major sales are announced.