Biography: Youngchull (John) Pai (1937 - )
Youngchull (John) Pai (1937 - ) was born Oct. 4, 1937 in Seoul, Korea, where he began his art instruction as a child. He moved to the Warwood neighborhood of Wheeling in 1949 and began studying art at Oglebay Institute’s Saturday Morning Art Program under Harry C. Holbert while attending Warwood Elementary School despite speaking no English.
His father, Minsoo Pai, was a Presbyterian pastor and a member of the Korean independence movement that rebelled against Japanese colonial rule. His own father, John’s grandfather, had been a commander in the resistance and was executed by the Japanese.
John’s mother, Soonoak Choi, was born in exile in Russia where her family fled to escape Japanese persecution. The two met when Soonoak returned to Korea to flee the Russian Civil War and to advance her education. John was born while his father was imprisoned for his activism. His father later traveled to Chicago to study. Meanwhile, Soonoak moved her family to a remote farm in Ilsan to avoid persecution. She called it the “Garden of Eden” and this natural setting had a deep impression on John. When Minsoo returned to Korea after WWII in 1945, the family moved to Seoul, where John began formally studying art.
In 1948, the family, including John and his sister, boarded the USS General H.F. Hodges for the U.S. In Warwood, the family stayed temporarily with Pai Minsoo’s friend, Rev. Arthur Pritchard. John, at 15, had his first solo art show, organized by Holbert, at Oglebay. When Holbert told him there was nothing more he could teach him, John applied to study through the Connecticut based Famous Artists School, learning by correspondence courses. John attended Warwood High School from 1954-56, and became an accomplished saxophonist. He credits J. Loren Mercer for teaching him “the lessons of discipline in music.”
After being awarded a full scholarship to Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, John moved to NYC. He graduated with a BFA in Industrial Design (1962) and MFA in Sculpture (1964). He compared his time at Pratt to the experience of listening to Dvořák’s Ninth Symphony: “The world opened to me like a new dawn.”
In 1965, he met and married Eunsook Lee in Seoul, and began a four decade career as a professor at Pratt, becoming director of the Division of Fine Arts in 1971. Over the years, John and Eunsook hosted numerous Korean artists and musicians at their Brooklyn home.
John has created numerous outdoor art pieces under commission, and has exhibited his work the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Korea, Whanki Museum in Seoul, Zimmerli Art Museum, Sigma Gallery, and Gallery Hyundai in Seoul, among many others.
John retired from Pratt to focus on his sculpture work in 2000. Throughout his life, John Pai also studied and was influenced by science, architecture, sports, music, and dance, all of which show up in subtle ways in his art.
A beautifully illustrated coffee table book (monograph) about his work, John Pai: Liquid Steel by John Yau, was published in 2023 and is part of the OCPL's Collection.
John and Eunsook now live in Connecticut.
