When the self-taught painter Matthew Wong died in 2019 at the age of 35 he left behind a body of work that marked him out as a prodigious talent. An exhibition in 2024 at the Van Gogh Museum focused on his devotion to the Dutch painter, much of Wong’s work defined by impasto, an obsession with the colour yellow, and swathes of hillside and golden sunlight. This exhibition at the Palazzo Tiepolo Passi includes 35 rarely displayed interior scenes dating from 2015–19, many of which have a ghostlier edge than those that were on show in Amsterdam (6 May–1 November). Doorways are a recurring theme: in a painting from 2016 a shadowy figure lurks before an open doorway through which only darkness is visible; in The Source (2019), a door is swung half open to reveal a shaft of orange light. Still lifes such as Vertigo (2019) demonstrate Wong’s love of Van Gogh, Matisse and other painters of the late 19th and early 20th century, while showing how Wong went beyond mere imitation to produce paintings that were unmistakeably his own.
Find out more from the Matthew Wong Foundation’s website.
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