The Gyeongseong Ilbo (The Keijo Nippo), a daily newspaper published by the Japanese Governors-General of Korea when Korea was under Japanese colonial rule (1910-1945), provides researchers withnews and informative articles that are now widely regarded as valuable source materials onKorean and East Asian art in the modern period. The newspaper’s reports on art exhibitions held in the early 20th century form the primary sources of information about individual artists, artist groups, and their works. The reports show thatthe diverse art eventsthat followed the Korean Art Exhibition (Joseon Misul Jeollamhoe) launched by the colonial authority in 1922 resulted in the growth of the Korean art market, which saw greater demand for art works among the public and the rising influence of artist communities. Many of these events attracted the participation of Japanese artists who enjoyed a greater chance of winning prizes than their Korean colleagues and accordingly played a more conspicuous role in spreading the influence of Japanese art upon the Korean art communities during this period.
The emergence of artist communities and art exhibitions throughout Korea in the 1920s indicates to Korea’s status as the second largest market for Japanese art. The 1920s and 1930s were characterized by government-sponsored art exhibitionsin which Japanese artists living in Korea actively participated, and by the growth of the Korean art market,ushering in a more generalized era of art events. The period is also marked by the distinctive role played by The Gyeongseong Ilbo (a modern-style daily newspaper) in introducing the new art movements that had emerged in Japan to the Korean art-loving public and in creating an autonomous space that contributed to the promotion of Japanese artists who had settled outside their “inner land”. There have been numerous studies on the local color of Korean art based on colonialist viewpoints, but, according to the conclusion of this study, the local color stressed by the Japanese colonialists was more apparent among Japanese artists in Korea, and was used to strengthen their position in the country. Therefore, a closer examination of the age of exhibitions on the basis of a new paradigm in which culture was distributed in the interest and power of Japanese settlers in Korea will help form a truer picture of the Korean art world in the 1920s and 1930s.