“I predicted all of this,” said Gabriel Marchisio sweeping his hand around the crowded cement room of the Chelsea Hotel Storefront Gallery. Marchisio is the Chelsea Hotel’s resident turban-topped tarot card reader and he has come to check out the largest exhibition of Dee Dee Ramone’s paintings to date, which opened on Wednesday and runs until 1 January.

While Ramone, who died in 2002, is best known as the founding bass player for New York City punk legends the Ramones, but he was also a rapper, a novelist, a painter and a creative spirit who couldn’t be contained in one medium.

The paintings that fill the show at the gallery are cartoonish and vibrant, filled with eye-popping color and dynamic self-portraits alongside his musical brothers – Joey Ramone, Sid Vicious and more. Like his music, Ramone’s paintings show little formal training, but are forceful, expressive and gritty. Some are reminiscent of the work of famed Warhol protégé Jean-Michel Basquiat, but according to Blondie guitarist Chris Stein, who knew both men, that may have been accidental. “I don’t know if he was referencing Jean, or whether he was just going with it,” said Stein. “It could just have been a type of primitivism that they were both tapped into.”

Ramone’s paintings have previously gone on display in Los Angeles, but the exhibition, set up in a sliver of a space adjacent to the under-construction Chelsea Hotel, is the first in New York, organized by Ramone’s widow, Barbara Ramone Zampini, and his estate manager John Cafiero. Cafiero has spent the last few years trying to collect as many of Ramone’s paintings as possible and return them to the estate. “Some of the pieces in the show were in Barbara’s possession,” said Cafiero, “But others were thought to be lost forever and I had to track them down all over the place. I was finally able to reacquire some of them for the estate, but there are more out there. We try to collect as many as we can, so we can share them with the world.”

The result of Cafiero’s hard work is a comprehensive look back at Ramone’s visual arts and the largest show of his work to date. In addition to Ramone’s paintings, the show also features photographs of New York in its punk heyday as captured by photographers including Bob Gruen, Stephanie Chernikowski, Jenny Lens, and Blondie’s Stein, who recently released a photography book.

One of the photos featured in the show pictures Ramone balancing dishes. “That was at Arturo Vega’s loft,” said Stein, who snapped the photo back in the 70s. “I remember him saying, ‘I’m a busboy! I’m a busboy!’ He was always like that. He’d see a guy digging a ditch and say, ‘I should be doing that instead of this!’ He was a very self-effacing, funny guy.”

Punk rock royalty came out to pay their respects at the show’s opening party. Gruen and Stein were there as was Jerry Only the bass player for the Misfits who wore his spikes-and-skulls vest for the occasion. “I met Dee Dee first in 1978,” said Only. “Looking at these pictures brings back a lot of memories. I haven’t seen these paintings in a while – since they were hung up in the Chelsea – and it’s great to see them again. His stuff is great. It’s very vivid. It’s very aggressive. I like it.”

The accolades were a fitting homecoming of sorts for Ramone. He has lived in the infamous Hotel Chelsea off-and-on and his art decorated the walls. Hosting the exhibition at the Chelsea made sense for his friends, fans and the hotel owner.

“We had this space and we wanted to activate it with things that were relevant to the Chelsea and would bring in the community and the tenants and the arts community in a variety of ways. When they approached us about this show, well, there was such a close connection between Dee Dee and the Chelsea, it was a natural fit,” said Ed Sheetz, whose company owns the Chelsea Hotel and the Storefront Gallery. “All the people coming to see this show make the Chelsea feel alive, even while it’s under construction.”

While Sheetz wanted to pay homage to the Chelsea’s storied past in the hopes of laying the foundation for a profitable future, the Dee Dee Ramone retrospective is much more than just a gallery exhibit – it’s a walk down a gritty memory lane.

“This is going to make me cry,” said Jackie Luther, who was a bartender at CBGBs, the nightclub where the Ramones grew from band to legends, who was at the exhibit to sell merchandise. “I worked in the club from 1993 until it closed and even though I came to the club after its heyday in the 70s, it was always a scene and very beloved. My heart’s there and now it feels like it’s here.”