Martin Wong

Martin Victor Wong ( born July 11, 1946 in Portland ( Oregon); † August 1999 in San Francisco) was an American painter. His name was Wong playful often called Genghis Martin Wong.

Martin Wong came from a family whose ancestors had immigrated from China. He grew up in San Francisco, where he 1964, the George Washington High School ended. His artistic career began Wong in the 1970s as a performance artist. In 1978 he went to New York City and worked from then on almost exclusively to painting. Wong, who had no formal education and whose work shows a strong sense of homosexual motives, was a respected, famous and prolific painter in the art scene of the Lower East Side. His works that deal with themes of the New York Chinatown and dominated by drugs and crime Lower East Side, join social documentary with humor and symbolism. About his painting Wong also worked with graffiti artists and also experimented with poetry and prose, which he often wrote on long rolls of paper. After Wong was diagnosed with AIDS, he went in 1995 with his family to San Francisco, where he died in 1999.

Wong collected Asian antiques and amassed one of the largest collections of graffiti, which he the Museum of the City of New York gave in 1993.

Exhibitions

• 2010: Galerie Buchholz, Cologne

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 ( English)