Lot 2303: Park Sookeun (1914-1965): Selling by the Roadside

Oil and mixed media on canvas, framed; depicting three women in traditional clothing and slippers seated amid a collapsible table and two round baskets filled with produce, the lower right corner signed in hangul Sookeun; the painted wood frame also inscribed in ink on the right side Park Sookeun in hangul and affixed on the top with two typewritten exhibition tags from the San Francisco Museum of Art documenting its inclusion in the 1957 exhibition entitled Art in Asia and the West held from October 28 to December 1, 1957.
Dimensions 12 1/2 x 16in (32 x 40.8cm)
Provenance: ex-collection Mr. and Mrs. J. M. Zimmerman, Daly City, California
Published and exhibited: San Francisco Museum of Art, Art in Asia and the West (San Francico, 1957), listed p. 38, the dedication of the exhibition to UNESCO listed on p.1
Literature: Oh Kwangsoo and Yi Guyul, Park Soo-Keun (Seoul, Chun Jaegook, 1995), catalogue section, p.197, letter dated 1957.11.25 from Mrs. Margaret G. Miller to Park Sookeun mentioning the Zimmerman painting she saw in the San Francisco exhibition; Han'guk kundai hoehwa sonjip (The Collection of Modern Korean Paintings), vol. 6 entitled 'Western Painting 6: Park Soo-keun' (Seoul, Kumsung Publishing Co., 1990), pp.83, 90 and 128-129.
Note: In the past ten years, Park Soo-keun has become the most sought-after modern Korean artist. As indicated above, this important work has been discussed in a number of Korean publications on the artist, but never illustrated. Its provenance from the Zimmerman collection is also documented in Korean publications; but this appears to be the first time that the painting itself has surfaced in public view since it was exhibited in 1957. Lee Ku-yeol in his article on the artist (see 'Western Painting 6: Park Soo-keun'), notes the irony that the artist was rejected at the Korean National Art exhibition in 1957 yet was afforded a high evaluation by American collectors such as the Zimmermans [and the Millers]. Certainly the painter himself - who was to become known as the 'painter of ordinary people (sominui hwaga) - must have valued 'Selling by the Roadside' because he adapted its quiet arrangement of figures for another painting of smaller scale executed in 1960 (see Park Soo-keun [1995], raisonnee section, unnumbered p.67, dimensions 19 x 33cm). Both, in turn, mirror his signed but undated early drawing of a solitary country woman seated in front of a basket (ibid. unnumbered p. 203).