Fay Chong

Having immigrated to Seattle, Washington, in 1920, Fay Chong came of age when the artistic landscape of the Northwest was shifting between realist painters, pictorialist photographers, and a new wave of modern artists. His interest in art was nurtured in high school, where he learned to make linoleum prints alongside classmates Andrew Chinn, George Tsutakawa, and Morris Graves. Along with Chinn and a small cohort of artists of Chinese descent that banded together as the Chinese Art Club in 1933, Chong also built close relationships with Mark Tobey, Kenneth Callahan, and Guy Anderson, while working for and continuing to develop his printmaking practice at the Federal Art Project (1938-42). From the 1940s onward, Chong developed watercolors that incorporated materials and techniques employed in Chinese ink painting. While many of these works depicted the region’s businesses and industrial structures, Chong also experimented with abstraction.

Authored by Anna Lee, curatorial assistant for Asian American art, 2025.