“Showing his independent and adamant nature, Yoo left home at a young age, determined to live a free and simple life as a painter, with no interference from the outside. But leading a free and simple life is never simple, and becoming an exemplary painter required incredible perseverance and commitment, as well as the strong support of his family, particularly his wife, Kim Kisoon.”
---「Yu Jin, “Preface to A Journey to the Infinite: YOO YOUNGKUK”」중에서

“The path of an artist is ultimately the search for one’s own identity. In this light, it seems perfectly natural, if not inevitable, that Yoo Youngkuk’s practice would finally lead him to the mountains, the theme that he spent the better part of his life exploring. These mountains manifest not only his actual hometown, but also the internal hometown of his heart.”
---「Kim Inhye, “The Mountain of Yoo Youngkuk”」중에서

“Distilling the natural world down to lines, shapes, and most of all, sumptuous color, Yoo was turning landscapes into potent metaphors and symbols…He was constructing a kind of personal universe, where everything is just as it should be, and then he is inviting its beholders to inhabit it.”
---「Andrew Russeth, “Born Again: Yoo Youngkuk at Home”」중에서

Like a poet who writes in his own personal vernacular, Yoo Youngkuk borrowed the fundamental elements of modernism, the international artistic language of the time, to convey his own view of life and nature.