One of the largest paintings at Art Basel Miami Beach, Martin Wong’s 12ft-wide Tai Ping Tien Kuo (Tai Ping Kuo) (1982), sold on Thursday to a US museum for $1.6m. The three-panel composition is on public display, on the stand of the New York-based gallery PPOW, for just the second time ever—it was shown at New York’s Asian Arts Institute in 1987 and has been in storage ever since. After Miami Beach, it will be featured in a forthcoming show of Wong’s work at Wrightwood 659 in Chicago.
The painting’s central panel includes a stylised, nude portrait of Wong’s mother and stepfather embracing in a pose reminiscent of William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s painting The Abduction of Psyche (1895). “Martin’s mother hated this painting, so out of respect for her we didn’t show it for decades,” Wendy Olsoff, PPOW’s co-founder, tells The Art Newspaper. “It’s just rife with references—both to world history and to Martin’s personal history.”
Representatives for the gallery declined to say which “major” US museum had acquired the work. Wong was born in Portland, Oregon. He lived in New York City for many years and spent the last five years of his life in San Francisco. He died from Aids-related illness at age 53.