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It is with a heavy heart that Kavi Gupta gallery announces the death of painter Young-Il Ahn. The esteemed painter passed away over the weekend in Los Angeles.
Ahn’s most famous paintings belong to his Water series, a body of work that associated with Dansaekhwa, an aesthetic position specific to Korea, which expresses natural processes through a monochromatic palette. As a Korean-born painter working in the U.S., Ahn is unique among Dansaekhwa artists.
Born in 1934 in Gaeseong, Korea, Ahn earned his BFA from Seoul National University in 1958, and relocated permanently to the United States in 1966. For most of his career, Ahn lived in Southern California, where he found inspiration in music and nature. A private person, he immersed himself in his studio practice where he developed a signature impasto method that was exacting and intensive. His singular technique is evident in his beloved Water Series, on which he worked for more than 30 years. In his memoir And still it flows towards me: a life lived with art, Ahn recounts his experience being shipwrecked in dense fog off the coast of Santa Monica. The moment the fog lifted that day, he witnessed a sublime interplay of light, shadow, and color on the water, and attempted in earnest to communicate it through his Water paintings. Ahn’s work has recently been the subject of monographic exhibitions at the Long Beach Museum of Art and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).
Prior to his passing, Ahn was in the process of planning his second solo exhibition with Kavi Gupta, scheduled to open in 2021. His paintings are included in the collections of LACMA, the Long Beach Museum of Art, and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, among others. He is survived by his wife Soraya and their daughters. Condolences may be directed to the family or to Kavi Gupta gallery.
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