A pioneer of abstract painting and the godfather of the Dansaekhwa movement, Whanki Kim established his place in Korean history and art at an early age.

His nomadic lifestyle led him to many different places, like Japan, France, and the U.S., which differentiated his artwork from other artists, who created their art based in Korea, due to the lack of opportunities for travel.

[7] During his second year into the program, Kim joined the Avant-Garde Western Painting Institute (アヴァンギャルド洋画研究所, AbuangyarudoYōga Kenkyūjo), led by Japanese artists who were introducing to Japan Cubism, Futurism, and Surrealism based on their experience living and working in Europe.

[8]: 53  In 1935, Kim is awarded for his first submission to the prestigious Second Section Association (二科会, Nikakai, 이과전, Igwajŏn), When the Skylarks Sing (종달새 노래할 때), marking his debut as an artist.

[9]: 23  His experiments of incorporating Korean motifs as simplified forms onto the flat picture plane continued, as can be seen in House <집> (1936) and Sauce Jar Terrace <장독대> (1936).

Features often seen in traditional Korean houses, such as wooden gates, paper screen doors, stone walls, stairs, and pottery, are also noted to have added a sense of order and repetition to his paintings, further illustrating his development towards pure abstraction.

[7] The Hakuban was established in 1936 after the closure of the Avant-Garde Western Painting Institute by five of its members, including Kim and Gil Jin-seop (길진섭, 吉鎭燮, 1970–1975).

Even after he left Tokyo, Kim continued to submit works to the Free Artists' Association in Japan until 1941, including Rondo <론도> (1938).

As one of the earliest examples of abstract art in modern Korea, the country's government designated the painting as a Registered Cultural Property (No.

Whanki Kim contrasts the realistic depiction of a traditional Korean woman with an ambiguous background that muddles the exact setting of the painting.

[12] In 1944, Kim, who had divorced his first wife, remarried Byun Dong-rim (변동림, 卞東琳, 1916–2004), who was a prodigiously talented writer and widow of poet Yi Sang.

The same year, Kim, along with artists Yoo Youngkuk, Lee Kyusang (이규상, 李揆祥, 1918–1967), created the New Realism Group (신사실파, Shinsashilp'a).

Its foundational idea was to pursue new types of realistic painting and contribute to the perception of a "new formation of reality", which could be exist apart from Japan's direct influence as well as the right-left ideological struggles that dominated the Cold War period of Korea.

The work, in which a piece of white porcelain is rendered as a round abstract geometric form, is considered to be one of the earliest examples from Kim's oeuvre in which he employs pottery as a significant motif for which he received critical acclaim.

[8]: 64  Since his return to his home country from Japan, Kim had collected and developed a sophisticated taste for Korean antiquities and pottery, especially for a type of white porcelain ware made in the Joseon period widely known as moon jars.

These years are said to have been a time of suffering for Whanki Kim—his wife, Hyang-an Kim, recalls his strong rage and habit of drinking, though he did continue to paint.

Some of the works produced during this time are Refugee Train <피난열차> (1951), Landscape at Chin-hae, Shanty, and Jars and Women <항아리와 여인들> (1951).

[12] Kim's oil painting An Evacuation Train from 1951 is another example of his early abstraction work that reflects his distance from the Korean war.

While some artists opted for sorrowful, more realistic depictions of this era using dark tones, Whanki Kim added his own touch of brighter hues of red and blue and simple shapes.

This was opposed to forcefully produced art with subjects of Stalin and Kim Il Sung during the time of South Korea under the North Korean rule.

His return to Seoul also allowed him to teach at the College of Fine Arts, Hongik University, to hold a one-man exhibition at the USIS Gallery, and to be elected a member of the Korean Academy.

Whanki Kim frequently traveled to new places to adopt new artistic techniques and incorporate them into his work, and his goal throughout his career was to reach this universality of a "boundaryless integration of Eastern and Western aesthetics".

When he traveled to Paris, his paintings underwent intense change, including the color palette primarily becoming blue, and they began to mimic the mottled ceramic surfaces.

In the 1950s, Whanki Kim began to incorporate traditional motifs from the Korean landscape, such as a blue moon, mountains, and plum blossoms.

With a grant from the Asia Society funded by the foundation of John D. Rockefeller III, they settled in a studio in the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

Whanki Kim took pride in the fact that he conserved "Koreanness" into his art as the oil paint on paper mimicked the mottled surface of pottery from Joseon dynasty.

<어디서 무엇이 되어 다시 만나랴> (1970), titled after a poem of his friend and Korean poet Kim Gwang-Seop (김광섭, 1905–1977).

It was also a departure from the Japanese-style Nihonga that represented the colonial period of Korea and adopted abstract paintings in Western art scenes during the era of modernization.

In Universe (1971), Kim painted repeating rows of circles made of dots that capture the essence of waves pulsating on the shore.

American paintings tend to have that "all-at-once" aspect, while Whanki Kim's work is constantly dynamic and there is an implicit sense of movement at all times.