Kim Hong Nyun is the most famous Korean butterfly artist, painting butterflies for the last 25 years. His signature butterflies embedded with a myriad of vibrant flowers have been the focal point of his paintings, installation art and most recently, the centerpiece of the collaboration with Samsung's launch of the Galaxy 20 foldable phone 'Flip Z', where his signature butterfly floats across the display screen.

 

Kim Hong Nyun graduated from Hongik University, UCLA and Claremont Graduate University. His distinguished career includes twenty individual exhibitions, most notably, the Installation Gallery and BFC Gallery in the U.S., and Hyundai Art Gallery, Gana Art Gallery, and the Solbit Exhibition Hall in South Korea. He has participated in more than 130 group exhibitions at home and abroad. Most notably, in 1995 he was invited to participate in the exhibition of 50 Korean artists, held at the UNESCO headquarters and from 2007-2009 the "Shoes for Hope" exhibition. In 2009, he was awarded the Secretary-General's plaque of merit by the Korean Committee of UNESCO.

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Kim Hong Nyun made art history with his achievements related to the "representation of transitional art" in the 1980s through his activities such as the founding of “Nanjido’, a major Korean art group in the 1980s. His work in this period is admired by art historian Kim Hong-hee in "Korean Art in the 80s: Art in the Transition Period between Modernism in the 70s and Postmodernism in the 90s” and Kim Dal-jin in "New Art Movement 26 Years-1967-1992," where they applauded Kim Hong Nyun’s ability of painting without being bound by concepts and his work in the transition period of art in the 80s and 90s.