Jongsuk Yoon

Pretty Brilliant Women in the Arts

Article

No. 38 • June 2025

For generations, the story of art has been told through a singular lens. When the first editions of canonical books like Janson’s History of Art and Gombrich’s The Story of Art were published, they featured zero women artists. The Pretty Brilliant: Women in the Arts series aims to make whole what has long been a one-sided story. In these issues, featuring 583 artists, we celebrate women who have always been creating, innovating, and inspiring, like Jongsuk Yoon.

Fig 1. Jongsuk Yoon in front of her work at The Nordic Watercolour Museum in Skärhamn, 2020 | photo: Kalle Sanner

text: Sarah Knigge

For Jongsuk Yoon (b. 1965), the past is the richest source of inspiration. ‘I want to recommend the younger generation – those who want to become artists – to go to museums and discover the masters,’ she has said. Born in Korea, Yoon grew up with a father who ran an art gallery specialising in calligraphy. In 1995, she moved to Germany, where she developed a unique style that merges East Asian traditions – such as sansuhwa (mountain and water paintings) with Western Modernist colour field expressionism.

Yoon paints from memory: impressions of Korean landscapes, even those she has never seen in person. One example is Mount Kumgang (Diamond Mountain), located in present-day North Korea – a place she has never visited, yet which looms large in her imagination as a symbol of the arbitrary division between North and South Korea. Her vibrant, layered paintings do not depict landscapes directly, just as the political dimension is not made literal. Yet for Yoon, any engagement with Korea is inherently political: ‘Pictures that refer to Korea are politically charged,’ she has said. Through her work, she suggests that while history and politics change people, nature endures. The mountains are still there. The rivers continue to flow.

Fig 2. Jongsuk Yoon, Kumgangsan, 2021, oil on canvas, 195 × 350 cm | courtesy the artist and Galerie nächst St. Stephan Rosemarie Schwarzwälder, photo: Achim Kukulies

Jongsuk Yoon

‘I believe that painting is a medium that is able to demonstrate the authenticity and symbolism of art as a powerful tool of change.’

Over time, Yoon’s paintings have grown in scale. Though monumental, they are anything but loud – instead, they feel tranquil, translucent, layered; like a dream. ‘They are landscapes of the soul,’ as Yoon describes them. ‘When I paint, it’s like going on a hike. I feel as if I’m inside the painting – my soul is there, wandering through it.’ The artist doesn’t begin with a set image in mind. Instead, she lets the painting lead the way. ‘I don’t have the finished picture in my head. It tells me what to do.’

Jongsuk Yoon is featured in See All This #38: Pretty Brilliant Women in the Arts Vol. III. Order a copy here.