MARTIN WONG

Martin Wong was born in Portland, Oregon and grew up in North Beach, neighboring San Francisco’s Chinatown. After graduating high school in San Francisco, he studied ceramics at Humboldt State University in Arcata. His study of ceramics would exert an immense influence on his practice as a painter, particularly on his palette (with its earth reds, burnt siennas, ochers, and umbers) and his deep feeling for materials. After graduating from Humboldt State University in 1970, Wong traveled to Europe, the Middle East and Asia to work with local ceramic artists. Concurrent with his ceramics, Martin Wong developed a practice around calligraphy starting in the late 1960s, foreshadowing his lifelong interest in poetry, graffiti, and sign-language. Between 1970 and 1973, Martin Wong again lived in San Francisco, where he worked in the environment of the queer performance groups Cockettes and Angels of Lights, of which he was also a member for some time. After 1973, Wong returned to Humboldt County, where he concentrated on his painting over the next few years. In 1978, Martin Wong moved to New York and, beginning in the early 1980s, lived in the Lower East Side. Wong became part of the emerging art and poetry scene there and was also particularly interested in graffiti. In 1994, Martin Wong was diagnosed HIV-positive. Due to the better medical care in San Francisco, he decided to return to his parents, with whom he had a very close relationship. He stayed with them until his death in 1999.