MATTHEW WONG (1984–2019) was a self-taught Chinese-Canadian painter whose emotionally charged works earned him international recognition during a career that lasted only seven years. Born in Toronto and raised between Canada and Hong Kong, Wong earned a Bachelor of Arts in cultural anthropology from the University of Michigan and a Master of Fine Arts in photography from the School of Creative Media at City University of Hong Kong.
Wong began painting seriously in 2012, after having practiced both photography and poetry. He initially explored painting abstractly before opting for figuration in 2015. Looking to secure a place in “the greater dialogue between artists throughout times,” he developed a distinctive visual language that blended Chinese, European, and American artistic traditions. His influences ranged from Chinese literati painters, such as Shitao and Bada Shanren, to modern and contemporary Western artists, including Vincent van Gogh, Henri Matisse, Alex Katz, Lois Dodd, and Joan Mitchell.
Working primarily in oils, gouache, and ink, Wong created luminous imaginary landscapes and introspective interiors that are characterized by a striking sense of color and dynamic mark-making. His compositions, often drawn from memory, evoke solitude and longing. He described his aim as to “activate nostalgia, both personal and collective.” Always beginning on a canvas without preconceived notions of where he would end up, Wong's mode of expression was deeply intuitive and utterly sincere.
He first garnered attention in 2017, when his work was featured at various art fairs across the United States and in group exhibitions in New York. His debut US solo show followed in 2018, at Karma in New York, where it was widely praised by prominent critics such as Jerry Saltz and John Yau. Wong’s unique ability to fuse originality with deft references to art history—and to unite uncompromising beauty with emotional depth—earned him a reputation as one of the most gifted painters of his generation.
His second solo exhibition, titled Blue, opened posthumously at Karma in November 2019, shortly after his death by suicide in Edmonton at the age of thirty-five. Wong had lived with autism, Tourette's syndrome, and depression.
Although his career as a painter was brief, Wong left a profound impact. His work is held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; and the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. Landmark museum exhibitions have further cemented his legacy. The first comprehensive retrospective of his work was presented at the Dallas Museum of Art in 2022, and at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 2023. In 2024, the Van Gogh Museum staged a major exhibition pairing Wong’s paintings with those of Van Gogh, one of his greatest influences. The exhibition subsequently traveled to the Kunsthaus Zürich and the Albertina in Vienna.
