Yun Hyong-keun (Cheongju 1928 - Seoul 2007) was one of the most important post-World War II Korean artists. His biography is marked by the troubled history of his country: imprisoned several times for having freely expressed his thoughts, in 1950 he miraculously escaped a group shooting: of his forty companions in misfortune only four, besides him, were saved from the platoon of execution.

After an initial phase of experimentation, his artistic language develops and is defined in the first half of the seventies. It is also the result of the harshness that marked its life, and focuses on a few essential elements. The pigment, of a very dark shade obtained from a mixture of ultramarine blue and burnt umber, is spread with a large brush in successive layers, very diluted in order to impregnate the raw canvas. Ultramarine blue and burnt umber symbolize heaven and earth; the artist's gesture repeats the phenomenon of water which, imbuing the porosity of the ground, gives rise to life.