초기 북한미술과 소련미술의 영향 관계 연구: 1950년대 유화와 포스터를 중심으로

Abstract

This study aims to prove how Soviet socialist realism influenced the North Korean art by examining art exchanges between North Korea and the Soviet Union in the early days. For this purpose, oil paintings and posters from North Korea in the 1950s were targeted, and themes and styles between North Korean and Soviet art were compared and analyzed. Through this process, the influence relationship between the two countries’ art world was examined. After liberation, the North Korean art community tried to remove the remnants of the Japanese colonial-era art community, and pursued Soviet socialist realism as an alternative. Accordingly, North Korea imported Soviet art magazines such as “Огонёк ”, “Искусство ” and sent North Korean students to the Soviet Union to be trained as art experts. These students who studied in the Soviet Union played roles to spread socialist realism to the North Korean art community by becoming art college professors or translating Soviet art books after returning home. After the Korean War in 1950, the propaganda function of North Korean art had been 60 strengthened and more posters were produced refering to war posters by Soviet artists. In their own war posters, North Korean artists borrowed the themes, compositions, and images of posters made by Soviet artists, but, at the same time, formed variations in detailed images to reflect national characteristics. After the Korean War ended in 1953, the North Korean art community has made efforts to rebuild. In 1953, Byun Wol-ryong(1916-1990), a professor at the Lepin University of Art in the Soviet Union, who was dispatched to North Korea, taught socialist realism to the North Korean art community by emphasizing to find the subject of the work in reality in order to liquidate formalism and to make the most of national characteristics. From 1956 to 1959, North Korea and the Soviet Union witnessed rapid political, economic, social, and cultural changes. In 1956, after Nikita Khrushchev(1894-1971)’s speech criticizing the individual worship of Joseph Stalin(1879-1953) at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the thaw began in the Soviet art community. Accordingly, the North Korean art community also tried to remove traces of Stalin’s personal worship. In addition, under the atmosphere where lyricism and romanticism were more valued, North Korean artists produced many landscape paintings. During his visit to North Korea in 1956, Klimasin(1912-1960) inspired many North Korean artists in connection with landscape painting. However, in the late 1950s, the relationship between the North Korean art community and the Soviet art community changed. Regarding the realization of the ‘national characteristics’, one of the official aesthetics of Soviet socialist realism, the North Korean art community paid attention to ‘Joseonswha(Joseon painting)’. Accordingly, the influence of the Soviet art community, which focused on oil painting, on North Korea has weakened. In addition, as North Korean artists visited the Eastern European Museum of Art and saw many Eastern European artworks, and as Chinese ink paintings were exhibited in North Korea, the North Korean art community had various exchanges with not only the Soviet Union but also China and Eastern European countries.