Martin Wong

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Martin Victor Wong (born July 11, 1946 in Portland (Oregon) , † August 1999 in San Francisco ) was an American painter. Wong often gave his name playfully as Martin Genghis Wong .

Martin Wong came from a family whose ancestors immigrated from China. He grew up in San Francisco, where he graduated from George Washington High School in 1964. Wong began his artistic career as a performance artist in the 1970s . In 1978 he went to New York City and from then on dealt almost exclusively with painting . Wong, who had no formal training and whose work shows a keen sense of homosexual motifs, became a recognized, famous, and prolific painter in the Lower East Side art scene . His work, which deals with topics from New York's Chinatown and the drug and crime-ridden Lower East Side, combines social documentation with humor and symbolism. In addition to painting, Wong worked with graffiti artists and also experimented with poetry and prose, which he often wrote down on long rolls of paper. After Wong fell ill with AIDS , he returned to his family in San Francisco in 1995, where he died in 1999.

Wong collected Asian antiques and amassed one of the world's largest collections of graffiti, which he donated to the Museum of the City of New York in 1993 .

Exhibitions

Books by Martin Wong

  • Footprints, poems and leaves, San Francisco ca.1968
  • New Paintings. November 5-December 23, 1988, (Exit Art) 1988
  • with Dan Cameron, Carlo McCormick: Sweet Oblivion. The Urban Landscape of Martin Wong, (Rizzoli) 1998 (engl.)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Wong, Martin
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wong, Martin Victor (full name); Wong, Martin Genghis
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American painter
DATE OF BIRTH July 11, 1946
PLACE OF BIRTH Portland, Oregon
DATE OF DEATH August 1999
Place of death San Francisco