Byun Wol-ryong's life and paintings

By Lee Sun-ho

On April 28, a dozen of my university classmates including myself had an opportunity to view an amazing exhibition to introduce the life and art of Pen Varlen (the Russian pronunciation of Byun Wol-ryong). Although my group had met to experience historical and cultural sightseeing tours, this exhibition, which ran from March 3 to May 8, was organized by the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art’s Deoksugung Museum, in celebration of the centennial anniversary of the birth of the ethnic Korean in the former Soviet Union (Sept. 29, 1916-May 25, 1990), who is not well known to Koreans as yet.

Born in Promsky Krai, he was educated and spent most of his life in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) behind the Iron Curtain. Sadly, he died the year before Perestroika and Glasnost in 1991. His life and art penetrate not only the modern and contemporary history of Korea, such as Japan’s colonization, the liberalization from colonial rule (1910-45), the division of the Korean Peninsula following the Korean War (1950-53) and the ongoing seven-decade-long ideological conflict, but also that of Russia such as the Communist-led October 1917 revolution, World War II (1939-45), the Lenin-Stalin totalitarianism, the Cold War and the transformation of the socialist system.

Among Pen’s accomplishments across his 74years, I happened to find two identical months I vividly remember: July 1953 and May 1990. July 28, 1953 was the day when the armistice treaty that ended the Korean War took effect. Pen visited North Korea for the first time some days shortly before the armistice, so he was able to draw a picture of the repatriation of North Korean prisoners of war (POWs) at Panmumjeom. For me, I stayed in Leningrad for a couple of days during mid-May 1990 as the chief of a dozen-man Korean banking survey mission just a week ahead of Pen’s demise there.

As a Korean painter and graphic artist of Soviet nationality and a member of the Leningrad Union of Artists, Pen grew up as an important figure in Soviet socialist realism art. Even though his parents were resettled in Central Asia as part of Stalin’s plan to deport minority groups to remote areas in 1937, he was able to study at the prestigious IlyaRepin Leningrad Academy of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, established in 1764. His artistic life took place mostly in the Soviet Union and briefly for 15 months in North Korea, and he observed major historic upheavals inside the two Communist states.

The highlight of my interest goes naturally to his link to North Korean art. The Soviet Cultural Ministry sent Pen to North Korea to help its satellite state re-establish the Pyongyang University of Fine Arts, which was destroyed during the Korean War. His connection with North Korea offers a glimpse of the unknown aspects related to North Korea, preparing to present good works for the 10th anniversary of the independence from Japanese colonial rule slated August 15, 1955. However, Pen could never return to North Korea for unknown political reasons behind the Iron Curtain.

He painted many imaginary landscapes of the North, including the gorgeous Mt. Diamond and beguiling rural and urban scenes. In addition to the picture for North Korean POWs going back to their side, I felt an ideological limit from Pen’s picture showing the barbed-wire demarcation line where a humble-looking North Korean woman is looking for her family member over the unwanted wire border among a group of South Korean men under the surveillance of an American military police. Feeling homesick for North Korea, Pen continued to keep in touch with many North Korean artists even after he returned to Russia. They are dancer Choi Seung-hee, writer Han Seol-ya, painter Kim Yong-joon and novelist Hong Myong-hee, aside from the well-known Boris Pasternak. He painted their portraits. I was deeply impressed by Pen’s accurate and bold expressiveness on canvas with a faithful abundance of colors.

In the end, I would like to extend my sense of gratitude to the hospitality of Pen’s son Sergei, his daughter Olga and the exhibition’s curator Kim Hye-young of the national museum. They made it possible for me and my 11 colleagues to retrospect and awaken the historical imagination and duties of current Koreans toward the understanding of the communist-socialist encampment in bygone days, aiming at realizing the peaceful unification of our divided fatherland.

The writer is an ombudsman columnist to The Korea Times in Seoul. Contact him at kexim2@unitel.co.kr.