Chung Sang Hwa, Lee Ufan, and Moon Seung Keun who worked in Japan in 1970s pondered upon how to contain thoughts in painting beyond the problem of how to represent objects. As a result, they gradually came to empty the canvas rather than fill it up with images. The advent and development of monochrome painting which formed a major trend in Korean art world at the same time was closely connected with these artist’s activities mediating the arts of two countries, Japan and Korea. They made an important contribution to the development of Korean and Japanese contemporary arts. Artist Chung Sang Hwa(b.1932-) was born in Youngdeuk, Gyeongsangbuk-do. Chung graduated from the art department of Seoul National University and studied in France between 1967 and 1968. Then he stayed in Japan from 1969 till 1976, and came back to France and worked there from 1977 till 1992. He finally came back to Korea in 1992 and has concentrated on working in his studio located in Gyeonggi-do since then. He is trying to express the invisible through the repetition of “revealing” something and “filling up” the canvas not by “painting” on it. Chung is searching for the life of modern people running around in circles everyday and its fundamental and philosophical meaning through his paintings. Artists Lee Ufan(b.1936-) studied in Seoul National University in Korea. But he dropped out of the school and studied philosophy in Nihon University in Japan. Then, as an artist and critic, he became one of the founders of the Japanese monoha movement in the 1970s. In the work, the points start as clear marks at first but gradually lose their definite forms and colors. This repeats itself and covers the canvas. Showing the repeated generation and disappearance of points, his works contain the cosmic principle. From the series of and of the 1970s, Lee Ufan’s works continued to and in the 1980s. He had solo Exhibition at Galeire Nationale du Jeu de Paume in 1997. His works are included in the collection of Pompidou Center in France, one of the most important art centers with international contemporary art collections. Lee has been in the spotlight from the international art scene and has contributed to raise and introduce the prestige of Korean contemporary art. Moon Seung Keun(1947-1982) started his artistic career late in the 1960s and gained recognition from the art world. He died an early death in 1982, at the age of 34. Looking back on his personal history, Moon studied art in the art center attached to Osaka Museum of Art. In 1970, when he started to get the recognition in Japanese art world under the name of “Fujio Noburu”, he visited Lee Ufan and confessed the agony he suffered from hiding his true identity as Korean. “I don’t think that a person who cannot even use his real name could make real art works”, Lee Ufan advised him. From the day, he stopped using the Japanese name, Fujio Noburu, and became Moon Seung Keun. Moon’s works created during his short life are included in the collection of prominent art museums in Korea and Japan such as The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, Chiba City Museum of Art, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea, and Gwangju Museum of Art. We hope that this exhibition would become an opportunity for people to get to know the lives and arts of these pioneers who opened a new era of abstract art and to find the beauty and meaning of Korean monochrome paintings.