Born in 1929 in what is now Maengsan in North Korea, Kim Tschang-Yeul spent his childhood amid the turmoil of the Korean War and postcolonial liberation. He later fled to South Korea as the North saw a dramatic rise in Communist influence. After studying painting at the Seoul National University, Kim joined Korea’s Art Informel movement along with a group of avant-garde artists including renowned Dansaekhwa masters Park Seo-Bo and Chung Sang-Hwa. As one of the first generations of Korean modernist painters, Kim participated in the Paris Biennale in 1961 and the São Paulo Biennale in 1965—exhibitions that opened the door for the artist to embark on his artistic career abroad that would span more than 40 years.

Created shortly after Kim’s relocation to Paris in 1969, Événement de la nuit (1970) is among his earliest Waterdrop paintings and signals the emergence of the motif that would define his practice. First exhibited at the Salon de Mai in 1972, the waterdrop became a persistent and profound symbol in Kim’s work. Drawing on Taoist philosophy, Kim regarded the droplet as an emblem of “full emptiness”—a visual meditation on impermanence, fragility, and resilience. His unwavering devotion to this motif served as both a spiritual exercise and a response to personal and collective trauma, embodying his pursuit of simplicity, humility, and ego dissolution. As poet and critic John Yau writes, “Événement de la nuit [is] representational, abstract, theatrical, and imagined—this is Kim's breakthrough work, unlike anything contemporaneously painted.”

1. John Yau in Kim Tschang-Yeul (New York: Gregory R. Miller & Co. and Tina Kim Gallery, 2022), p. 9.