Nude

Kim Sou was born in Hamheung in northern Korea. He went to Tokyo in 1938 to study at Kawabata Art College and then at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts from which he graduated in 1944, the year he won the special prize for "Still life in a room at night" in the 23rd National Fine Arts Exhibition of Korea. He had his first one-person exhibition at the Tonghwa Gallery, Seoul in 1949. In 1955 he went to Paris to study oil techinique at Académie de la Grande Chaumière and exhibited regularly in the Salon d'Automne thereafter. In 1961 he returned to Seoul for a one-man exhibition at the Sudo Gallery sponsored by UNESCO and opened the Kim Heungsou Fine Arts Research Center. The next year Kim was awarded the First May Cultural Prize in Fine Arts by the Ministry of Education and the National Academy of Arts of Korea. In 1966 he had a one-person exhibition at Press Center Art Gallery, Seoul. His paintings were exhibited at the Woodmere Gallery in Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania in 1970 while he was instructor in the Department of Education, Philadelphia Art Museum. He also taught at Moore College of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. In 1979 he participated in "Korean Modern Art of the 1950s" sponsored by the Korean Modern Art Gallery, Seoul.