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| Germany-based multidisciplinary artist Ro Eun-nim died Tuesday at the age of 76. Courtesy of Gana Art Center |
By Park Han-sol
Germany-based painter Ro Eun-nim, who was best known for bringing to life semi-abstract representations of fish, birds, mammals and flowers on canvas as a vibrant ode to nature, died Tuesday after battling cancer. She was 76.
Born in Jeonju, North Jeolla Province, in 1946, Ro made the decision to move to Germany in 1970 at the age of 24 shortly after her mother's sudden death.
From the 1960s to the 1970s, the Park Chung-hee government dispatched over 10,000 nurses and nearly 8,000 mine workers to West Germany to obtain foreign capital and economic aid that was much needed in the country, which at the time, was still recovering from the 1950-53 Korean War.
Ro was part of that wave of mass migration, landing a job as a nurse's aide in a hospital in Hamburg.
One day, when she came down with a cold and had to miss work, she got a visit from the chief nursing officer. Little did she know then that that day would forever change her life.
The officer, who came across Ro's paintings ― her hobby at the time ― which were tucked away in the corner of a room, proposed in 1972 that she hold a small exhibition inside the hospital.
Once the show opened, word spread fast until the news reached Hans Thiemann, a painter educated in the Bauhaus and a professor at the Hamburg Academy of Fine Arts. At his suggestion, at the age of 27, Ro became a student of painting at the academy, eventually rubbing shoulders with the likes of video art visionary Nam June Paik.
And so began her life as a full-time artist.
In 1990, she was appointed as a professor at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences ― as the first Korean to do so ― dedicating the next two decades of her to life training young minds.
In November 2019, the painter also became the first non-German-born artist to have a permanent exhibition hall established in her honor at the City Museum of Michelstadt.
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| Ro Eun-nim's "One Spring Day" (2019) / Courtesy of Gana Art Center |
German art critic and historian Annelie Pohlen once said that Roh's oeuvre serves as "a bridge that connects Eastern meditative spirit with European Expressionism."
Her bold strokes and primary colors birthed a simplified, intuitive version of the universe as part of her artistic inquiry into what forces constitute nature. With the tip of her brush, she breathed life and vitality into each imagined creature roaming freely on the canvas.
Yet, while the artist was best known for her life forms rendered in oil and acrylic paint on canvas and on hanji (traditional Korean paper made from the bark of mulberry trees), Ro's oeuvre extended far beyond the realm of painting ― to performances, terracotta sculptures, installations and even stained glass.
In fact, her ornamental glass windows can still be viewed at St. John's Evangelical Lutheran Church in Hamburg as well as at Oakvalley Church in Gangwon Province.
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