[2] From the late 1960s, Kim Tschang-yeul presented works in international stages, studied in the United States, and eventually relocated to Paris in 1969, where he developed his signature water droplet paintings.
[7] After his hometown was taken over by the Soviet Civil Administration in 1946, he was arrested for possession of an anti-communist pamphlet, and left high school before graduating.
[11][12] As a result of the Korean War, Kim lost his sister, more than half of his classmates, and suffered from economic hardship for more than a decade.
[10] Even while working in the force, he submitted poems, paintings, and illustrations to the Police Academy's magazine, Gyeongchal sinjo (경찰신조; 警察新潮).
For this exhibition, he submitted the famous water droplet painting, Event of Night (Événement de la nuit, 1972), which gained critical acclaim.
"[11] The attention received from the water droplet paintings was a great reward after almost a decade of inconspicuousness in the French art field.
[26] In the 1980s, Kim Tschang-yeul engaged in several prominent types of water-drop series, including the Poem of 100 Characters (천자문) and Recurrence (회귀).
[27] Critical analyses of Kim Tschang-yeul's paintings often refer to the subject of water droplets as multi-layered images of cleansing, purification, and "the evanescence of individual life.
In other words, the Chinese characters are not simply laid out as a (back)ground, but actually serves as a cover for the water drop images.
[11][2][31] Kim Tschang-yeul has been compared to Lee Ufan and Nam June Paik and described as a "towering figure of Korean modern art".