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- Wong Keen (Chinese: 王瑾; pinyin: Wáng Jǐn, born 23 November 1942) is a Singaporean painter who was primarily trained in New York. He is known for being one of the first Singaporean artists to be educated in the United States and for his syncretic body of work that melds together the sensibilities of Chinese literati painting and the New York School. His practice, unusual for his generation, has led to him being described as "Singapore's first abstract expressionist". From 1969 to 1996, Wong also founded and operated Keen Gallery in New York, a framing studio and exhibition space. A protégé of the pioneer artist Chen Wen Hsi while also training under Liu Kang, Wong counts among the second generation of Singaporean artists. His early works bore distinctive features of the Nanyang School, with an emphasis on cubist and fauvist modernist ideas. After enrolling in the Art Students League of New York in 1961, his practice has broadened to include influences from abstract expressionism, colour field painting, and action painting, all the while maintaining an affinity with Chinese calligraphic aesthetics and the idiosyncratic compositional forms of Bada Shanren. Wong's preferred media reflects his diverse aesthetic inheritance and includes oil paint, Chinese ink and colour, acrylic paint, and collage, executed on canvas, archival paper, and rice paper. Preferring to work with the same subject matter over long periods of time, Wong's oeuvre has often been categorised serially, with his paintings of nudes, lotuses, and flesh being particularly prominent. Wong Keen's practice is currently based in Singapore. (en)
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