Wong, Tyrus, b. 1910
Designer, Illustrator, Painter, PrintmakerCalif., China (Show Bio)
Oral history interview with Tyrus Wong, 1965 Jan. 30
Sound recording: 1 sound tape reel ; 5 in.
Transcript: 28 p.
An interview of Tyrus Wong conducted 1965 Jan. 30, by Betty Hoag, for the Archives of American Art.
Wong discusses making a film for grade schools and UCLA, which was produced by Eliot O'Hara, where he demonstrated Oriental painting techniques and Joe Jones demonstrated American techniques; working as an illustrator for Republic Studio; designing pottery plates for Greenfield Pottery, Gabriel Pottery in Pasadena; illustrations for the Western Art Review magazine; covers for the Los Angeles Times Home Section 1954 & 1955; text and illustrations for Watercolor Portraits, 1949; designing ads for various magazines; and doing watercolors, lithographs, and murals for the WPA, including the Santa Monica Library. Wong recalls Surasawa, Dorothy Jeakins, Nick Berganti, Hideo Dati, Benjy Ocobo, Carl Winter, Stanton Macdonald-Wright, Jerre Murry, Steven LaVerne Dunwell, George Stanley, Gordon Newell, and Frank Buck.
Conducted as part of the Archives of American Art's New Deal and the Arts project, which includes over 400 interviews of artists, administrators, historians, and others involved with the federal government's art programs and the activities of the Farm Security Administration in the 1930s and early 1940s.
Subjects:
- Asian American artists
- Buck, Frank E. (Frank Eugene),
- Designers
- Federal aid to the arts
- Interviews
- Jeakins, Dorothy
- Jones, Joe
- Macdonald-Wright, Stanton
- Murry, Jerre
- Newell, Gordon
- O'Hara, Eliot
- Painters
- Painting, Asian
- Painting, Modern
- Printmakers
- Sculptors
- Sound recordings
- Stanley, George M.
- Winter, Carl
How to Use this Interview
- Transcript available on the Archives of American Art website.
- A transcript of this interview is available online.
- For more information on using resources at the Archives of American Art, please visit our Ask Us page