Museum Hanmi holds a large-scale retrospective exhibition of William Klein(1926~2022) entitled DEAR FOLKS in 2023, which is Klein’s first posthumous exhibition. Klein was an artist who led a new trend in visual arts in the 20th century. Among his many contributions to modern visual aesthetics, he pioneered the use of modern and contemporary photography and moving images. As a painter, photographer, book designer, filmmaker and writer, he challenged traditional rules, taboos, and limitations, thus overturing the dominant aesthetic narrative and tradition. This exhibition aims to provide a comprehensive view of Klein’s entire artistic career, which has been largely noted for certain works or genres.

By presenting his works from the early 1950s through 1990s, which are the most critical years of his career, the exhibition attempts to convey the most controversial and influential artist’s multifaceted career.

The exhibition presents over 130 major works and 40 related items from the personal archive, which are organized into 8 sections. The works include his early paintings from the 1950s, photograms, an attempt to challenge the formalistic nature of traditional abstract art, as well as his first photographs taken outdoors. In addition, photographs and photobooks on large cities-the first of which, dedicated to New York, was considered a milestone for modern photography from the very beginning-, ‘Lettrist’ paintings from the 1960s, fashion photographs, which began with a collaboration with Vogue in 1955, documentary and feature films, as well as his ‘painted contact’ prints from the 1990s will be presented together.

William Klein, who began as a painter, photographer, and graphic designer, eventually learned to use a variety of visual media, including books, the illustrated press, television, and the silver screen. His gaze and camera were always directed at the crowd, and he appropriated with ease various mediums of the time to communicate with them. ‘DEAR FOLKS’, the title of the exhibition, evokes a tender appeal to humanity, understood as family. This expression sums up the correspondence he has maintained and that his work continues to maintain with the men and women of the contemporary age: tingled with affection, bitten with wit, tempted by satire and provocation. In the course of this exhibition, which covers some 50 years of creation, we hope to provide a better understanding of the breadth of Klein’s artistic world, which was able to bring together within its frameworks, without ever abandoning the desire to experiment, a single yet plural humanity.