Martin Wong (b. 1946 Portland, OR, d. 1999 San Francisco, CA) grew up in San Francisco, studying ceramics and art history in his 20’s while working as a poster artist and performer traveling Europe, California, and Asia. Having moved to New York City in 1978, Wong documented the environs of downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn, portraying in an earthy palette the tenement buildings, rowhouses, alleyways, pubs, and hotels as well as the families and workers who inhabit them. He is well-known for portraying these social subjects with transcendent realism through a graphic, almost comic-like sensibility, imbuing his compositions with constellations, poetry, and figures or objects from Asian religions and spiritual traditions. Wong exhibited extensively at key downtown galleries, including EXIT ART, Semaphore, and P·P·O·W while also supporting himself as an employee at the gift shop of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He passed away in 1999 due to AIDS related complications.

Wong earned a B.A. from Humboldt State University, Arcata, CA, in 1970. Major exhibitions include 2015’s Human Instamatic at the Bronx Museum of Art; which later traveled to the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH; and the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, as well as Martin Wong: Malicious Mischief, at the Museo Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, Madrid, Spain, later installed at the Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; Camden Art Centre, London; and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. His work is represented in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA, among others.