b'Martin WongMartin Wong (19461999) was born in Portland, Oregon, and grew up in the Chinatown district of San Francisco. He received a BA in Ceramics from Humboldt State University, Arcata, California, but as a painter he was self-taught. In the late 1960s he was part of the Bay Area art scene and hippie movement, making stage sets for the performance group Angels of Light.In 1978, Wong moved to New York and settled in Loisaida, the Hispanic section of the Lower East Side. This part of New York, plagued in the 1980s by drugs and crime, became the main subject of his paintings, which are both re-alistic and poetic. In 1982, Wong met the Nuyorican poet Miguel Piero, who became his lover and collaborator for a period. His paintings sometimes in-corporated poems by Piero, often in the form of graffiti on the walls of street scenes. Wongs interest in graffiti also took the form of collecting, and in 1989 he founded the Museum of American Graffiti in the East Village. Much of Wongs art is autobiographical, his treatments of urban life, class, race, and sexual orientation raising questions about identity before they became part of mainstream cultural debate. He died in 1999 from AIDS/ HIV-related illness.Exhibited in : East Village USA, New Museum, New York, December 9,2004March 19, 2005 Acts of Faith : Politics and the Spirit, The Art Gallery, Cleveland State University, Cleveland, OH, JanuaryFebruary 1988Martin Wong : A Picture Show, Semaphore Gallery, New York, OctoberNovember 1985Literature /Press : A. Beadnell, V. Kam, M. Kwon, M. Johnson and G. Ware, eds., Martin Wong Catalogue Raisonn, Stanford, 2022ongoing (illustrated online).Richard G. Mann, Wong, Martin, glbtq : An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Culture, 2007, https : / /exhibits.stanford.edu /martin-wong, p. 5Dan Cameron, Liza Kirwin, and Alan W. Moore et al., East Village USA, exh. cat., New York : New Museum, 2004, illustrated, no. 174, p. 31Jeffrey Bruce, Red Brick and Chain Link, The International Review of African American Art, no. 4, 2002, illustrated, p. 38Barry Schwabsky, A City of Bricks and Ciphers, Art in America, no. 9, September 1998, p. 103Dan Cameron, Brick by Brick : New York According to Martin Wong, Sweet Oblivion : The Urban Landscape of Martin Wong, exh. cat., New York : New Museum, 1998, illustrated, pp. 8, 53, pl. 6 Lucy R. Lippard,Acts of Faith : Politics and the Spirit, Cleveland : Cleveland State University Art Gallery, 1988, illustrated p. 7Dan Cameron, Image and Authority : The Recent Painting of Martin Wong, Arts Magazine, no. 5, January 1986, pp. 14, 16 African Temple at 9th Street,1985Acrylic on canvas160 161 121.9243.8 cm'