Mansudae art studio

Korean spelling
Korean alphabet :	만수대 창작사
Hanja :	萬壽臺創作社
Revised Romanization :	Mansudae Changjaksa
McCune-Reischauer :	Mansudae Ch'angjaksa

The Mansudae Art Studio is a studio in the North Korean capital Pyongyang in the district of P'yŏngch'ŏn-guyŏk . With a total area of 120,000 square meters, it is the largest and most important art production facility in North Korea. It has existed since 1959 and employs around 4,000 people, including around 1,000 trained painters, sculptors and other artists.

There are 13 creative groups and seven factories in the studio. Bronze figures , oil paintings , ceramic sculptures , woodcuts and the like are made, among other things .

The art studio is also the production site for numerous monumental statues in North Korea and also fulfills international orders via the construction company Mansudae Overseas Projects .

history

First bronze figure with Kim Jong-il (grounds of the art studio in North Korea)

The Mansudae Art Studio was founded on November 17, 1959.

In 2005/06, the bronze figures of the Frankfurt Fairy Tale Fountain, melted down during World War II , were reconstructed in the Mansudae art studio using photographs from the 1920s. The contacts were established in the run-up to the 2004 book fair in order to persuade North Korea to participate in the fair and to strengthen the reform process in the socialist country.

The first exhibition of the studio in the western cultural area took place in Genoa , Italy from May 17th to June 17th 2007.

In 2011, the South Korean police took action against a smuggling ring that smuggled paintings from the art studio to South Korea via China in order to obtain foreign currency for the country of North Korea. The police estimated the revenue the studio received from the smuggling business at around 5,500 euros annually. In addition, the studio received about half of the profit from the sale of the paintings.

On 14 February 2012, two days before the day of the bright star , the art studios in a ceremony which was unveiled a new monumental, 5.70-meter-high bronze statue in the central square, Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il as Rider represents. It is the first of the bronze leaders' portraits typical of North Korea, which reproduces General Kim Jong-il who died on December 17, 2011. Before that there was only a single statue of the riding Kim Il-sung in the square.