Martin Wong
was born in 1946 in Portland, Oregon, grew up in San Francisco and worked as an artist in New York. His paintings are condensed scenarios of fantasy figures, autobiographical stories and urban city life settings. Drawing on his memories of growing up in San Francisco's Chinatown, Wong based his images on photographs, postcards and memorabilia, as well as on his life in New York. Wong's paintings are a mixture of dragons, movie stars, pagodas, demons, and street scenes mixed together in a circus-like scenery with parallels to the dense activities and street life we find in both places. His paintings are highly autobiographical and we find him depicted in a multiplicity of characters: an opera singer, a kung fu master, or wearing a Stetson with an image of Christ. Wong has exhibited continuously throughout the world and is represented in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
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