News
Father and Son Artists
Sep
The Mansudae Art Studio has many father and son artists.
Among them are Merited Artist Ko Jong Gil, 61, and his son Ko Kum Il, 31.
Kim Hong Gwang, a Merited Artist of the studio, said, “Ko Jong Gil is widely known among the professionals and amateurs for his original ideas, vivid detailed depiction, elegant technique and telling touch. Every work of his is impressive and realistic.
As a graduate from Pyongyang University of Fine Arts, Ko Jong Gil painstakingly explored the way of making his works to reflect the people’s thoughts and feelings and their emotion.
He made efforts to preserve the merits of oil painting, which can deeply express complicated change in colour and in light and darkness and ensure vividness and cubic effect well, and creatively apply to it the principles of Korean painting—implication and intensiveness.
On Sundays, he visited the Korean Fine Art Museum to study the works recorded in the field of art, and practiced one by one the techniques used to create the works.
He never missed even a single phenomenon and any of its details and did a relevant drawing. During his field experience at the Chollima Steel Complex in Juche 98 (2009), he would not miss even trivial details of what happened during a break and thus created 25 drawings, including “Our Photographer,” amazing the workers there.
Thanks to true depiction based on exact sketches and deep and impressive colouring, his oil paintings “Leading a Long March”, “Appearance of the Homeland”, “Successors”, etc., were highly appreciated at several exhibitions including a national fine arts exhibition and registered as the possessions of the country.
His elegant works are also well known to China and other countries.
He majors in portrait and landscape painting.
He likes spring and summer and is fond of painting flowers.
Like his father, Ko Kum Il is concentrating his efforts on producing portraits and landscapes which truly reflect the sentiments of the times.
His works “Joy on a Full Load of Fish”, “In Spring” and “At Ryongwang Pavilion” created in recent years were highly appreciated at national fine arts exhibitions.
Although his career as an artist is short, he is regarded as a rising artist at the studio.
Ko Jong Gil is wont to say to his son, “A painter is a person who records the history with pictures. No matter how excellent the reality is, he can’t produce a good work or the one to be recorded in history unless his heart beats ardently.”
