Ha Chong Hyun graduated from Hongik University in 1958, where he remained as a professor until 2001, when he retired and started the "Ha Chong Hyun Art Award". The chairman of Korean Avant-garde association from 1964 to 1974, he was also appointed as a commissioner for 24th Cagnes International Painting Festival and 43th Venice Biennale. He was best known as the director of Seoul Museum of Art between 2001 and 2006. His work was showcased at the Mudima Foundation for Contemporary Art in 2003 and Gyeongnam Art Museum in 2004, as well as the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Korea (2012 retrospective).
In his early years, Ha already employed non-traditional materials such as plaster, barbed wire or the burlap used to transport food aid from the U.S. after the Korean War. Since the early 1970s, he has been using the hemp cloth employed normally for rice bags, allowing him to paint without a paintbrush, just by applying of paint on the reverse of the canvas and pushing it until it penetrates the fabric and reaches the other side. His conception of painting has been described as both "a tool for meditation" and as "a bodily function". Phippe Dagen also notes that his limited palette and range of materials leads to a meditative simplicity and a "visual neutrality" which supersedes the ego present usually in Western Abstract Expressionism.
