Acclaimed South Korean artist and illustrator, Kim Jung Gi, has died of a heart attack. He was 47.
Daniel Maghen art gallery announced his demise on Wednesday, 5 October.
According to a statement shared on Kim’s Instagram page, the South Korean artist had just completed his final engagement in Europe and was about to board a plane to New York, where he was scheduled to appear at Comic Con this week.
After experiencing chest pains at the airport, Kim was taken for surgery to a nearby hospital, where he died.
“After having done so much for us, you can now put down your brushes,” wrote his collaborator, Hyun Jin Kim.
Jim Lee, publisher and chief creative officer of DC Comics, called Kim “one of the absolute greats” in a series of tweets remembering the Korean artist, who occasionally designed covers for DC series and participated in drawing workshops through the company.
“@KimJungGiUS was a truly phenomenal talent whose pen and brush wizardry captivated and inspired millions of fans around the world,” Lee tweeted. “While he drew some incredible comics, it was his live drawing & his sketchbooks about his life, travels and dreams which spoke to me most.”
A lifelong artist, Kim got his start drawing in the South Korean comics publication Young Jump before he created his own manhwa, a style of South Korean comic, called “Tiger the Long Tail,” or “TLT.”
According to CNN, Kim is known for his live drawing sessions, Kim covered blank canvases with impossibly detailed scenes that he drew often without a reference image.
He’d create scenes using visual snippets he’d collected and committed to memory, then apply to paper.
He told the arts publication Visual Atelier that for his most sweeping pieces, he had about “60% of the image in (his) head” and improvised the rest.
He also taught in formal academic spaces, lecturing at universities about manhwa. With his students, he emphasized the ability to ” visualize the moment,” melding observations from their daily lives with images in their imagination.
“It’s miserable when you can’t draw what you have in your head,” he said in a June interview.
While in Paris, he completed a Batman-themed illustration featuring the Dark Knight, Catwoman and several of the superhero’s best-known foes, as well as a work of art inspired by soccer for the Paris Saint-Germain F.C.
Marvel Comics editor-in-chief, C.B. Cebulski, echoed Lee’s praise: “There was no one quite like (Kim),” he said of the artist, who also worked on Marvel comic covers.