Wonsook Kim
Wonsook Kim (김원숙), born in Busan, South Korea, in 1953 and raised in Seoul, is a distinguished Korean‑American artist celebrated for her poetic and narrative-driven works in painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, multimedia and installation art. After moving to the U.S. in 1972, she earned her BFA (1975), MA (1976), and MFA (1978) in fine arts—with emphasis on printmaking—at Illinois State University.
Awarded the UN’s Artist of the Year in 1995, Kim has since engaged in over 60 solo exhibitions across the globe—including in New York, Seoul, Paris, Tokyo, Bologna, and São Paulo—and her works reside in major collections such as MoMA, the Brooklyn Museum, Ringling Museum (FL), National Museum of Women in the Arts (DC), National Museum of Contemporary Art (Seoul), and even the Vatican collection galleries.
Kim’s art reflects her lifelong exploration of universal human emotions—hope, sorrow, longing, joy—expressed through fluid, calligraphic lines and dreamlike imagery often inspired by her upbringing in a storytelling, musically inclined Christian household, as well as Korean folklore, literature (such as T.S. Eliot and Midang), and everyday life in both Korea and America.
Right: River Maiden, lithograph, 2002
