Arshile Gorky (; born Vostanik Manoug Adoian, hy, Ոստանիկ Մանուկ Ատոյեան; April 15, 1904 – July 21, 1948) was an

Armenian-American Armenian Americans ( hy, ամերիկահայեր, ''amerikahayer'') are citizens or residents of the United States who have total or partial Armenians, Armenian ancestry. They form the second largest community of the Armenian diaspora after A ...

painter who had a seminal influence on

Abstract Expressionism Abstract expressionism is a post–World War II art movement in American painting, developed in New York City in the 1940s. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve international influence and put New York at the center of the ...

. He spent the last years of his life as a national of the United States. Along with

Mark Rothko Mark Rothko (), born Markus Yakovlevich Rothkowitz (russian: Ма́ркус Я́ковлевич Ротко́вич, link=no, lv, Markuss Rotkovičs, link=no; name not Anglicized until 1940; September 25, 1903 – February 25, 1970), was a Latv ...

Jackson Pollock Paul Jackson Pollock (; January 28, 1912August 11, 1956) was an American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. He was widely noticed for his " drip technique" of pouring or splashing liquid household paint onto a hor ...

and

Willem de Kooning Willem de Kooning (; ; April 24, 1904 – March 19, 1997) was a Dutch-American abstract expressionist artist. He was born in Rotterdam and moved to the United States in 1926, becoming an American citizen in 1962. In 1943, he married painter El ...

, Gorky has been hailed as one of the most powerful American painters of the 20th century. The suffering and loss he experienced in the

Armenian genocide The Armenian genocide was the systematic destruction of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, Armenian people and identity in the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Spearheaded by the ruling Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), it was ...

had crucial influence at Gorky’s development as an artist.

Early life

Arshile Gorky, The Artist and His Mother

Gorky was born in the village of Khorgom (today's Dilkaya), situated on the shores of

Lake Van Lake Van ( tr, Van Gölü; hy, Վանա լիճ, translit=Vana lič̣; ku, Gola Wanê) is the largest lake in Turkey. It lies in the far east of Turkey, in the provinces of Van and Bitlis in the Armenian highlands. It is a saline soda lake ...

in the

Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire, * ; is an archaic version. The definite article forms and were synonymous * and el, Оθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία, Othōmanikē Avtokratoria, label=none * info page on book at Martin Luther University) ...

(modern-day

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a list of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolia, Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with ...

). His birthdate is often cited as April 15, 1904, but the year might have been 1902 or 1903. Toward the end of his life, he was particularly vague about his date of birth, changing it from year to year. In 1908, his father emigrated to America to avoid the draft, leaving his family behind in the town of Van. He settled in Providence, Rhode Island. In 1915, Gorky fled Lake Van during the

and escaped with his mother and three sisters into Russian-controlled territory. In the aftermath of the genocide, Gorky's mother died of starvation in

Yerevan Yerevan ( , , hy, Երևան , sometimes spelled Erevan) is the capital and largest city of Armenia and one of the world's List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest continuously inhabited cities. Situated along the Hrazdan River, Y ...

in 1919. Arriving in America in 1920, the 16-year-old Gorky was reunited with his father, but they never grew close. In the process of reinventing his identity, he changed his name to "Arshile Gorky", claiming to be a

Georgian Georgian may refer to: Common meanings * Anything related to, or originating from Georgia (country) ** Georgians, an indigenous Caucasian ethnic group ** Georgian language, a Kartvelian language spoken by Georgians **Georgian scripts, three scrip ...

noble (taking the

name Arshile/Archil), and even telling people he was a relative of the Russian writer

Maxim Gorky Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (russian: link=no, Алексе́й Макси́мович Пешко́в; – 18 June 1936), popularly known as Maxim Gorky (russian: Макси́м Го́рький, link=no), was a Russian writer and social ...

Career

In 1923, Gorky enrolled in the recently founded New England School of Art in

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

, eventually becoming a part-time instructor. During the early 1920s he was influenced by

Impressionism Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open Composition (visual arts), composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating ...

, although later in the decade he produced works that were more

postimpressionist Post-Impressionism (also spelled Postimpressionism) was a predominantly French art movement that developed roughly between 1886 and 1905, from the last Impressionist exhibition to the birth of Fauvism. Post-Impressionism emerged as a reaction a ...

. During this time he was living in New York and was influenced by

Paul Cézanne Paul Cézanne ( , , ; ; 19 January 1839 – 22 October 1906) was a French artist and Post-Impressionism, Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th-century conception of artistic endeavour to a ...

. In 1925 he was asked by

Edmund Greacen Edmund William Greacen (1876–1949) was an American Impressionist painter. His active career extended from 1905 to 1935, during which he created many colorful works in oil on canvas and board. One of his works, a reproduction of which is at the ...

of the

Grand Central Art Galleries The Grand Central Art Galleries were the exhibition and administrative space of the nonprofit Painters and Sculptors Gallery Association, an artists' cooperative established in 1922 by Walter Leighton Clark together with John Singer Sargent, Ed ...

to teach at the

Grand Central School of Art The Grand Central School of Art was an American art school in New York City, founded in 1923 by the painters Edmund Greacen, Walter Leighton Clark and John Singer Sargent. The school was established and run by the Grand Central Art Galleries, an ...

; Gorky accepted and remained with them until 1931. In 1927, Gorky met Ethel Kremer Schwabacher and developed a lifelong friendship. Schwabacher was his first biographer. Gorky said:

The stuff of thought is the seed of the artist. Dreams form the bristles of the artist's brush. As the eye functions as the brain's sentry, I communicate my innermost perceptions through the art, my worldview.

In 1931, Gorky sent a group of works ranging in price from $100 to $450 to the Downtown Gallery in New York. (The artist's name was spelled "Archele Gorki" in the gallery's records. Most of Gorky's works from this period were unsigned.) The exact nature of their relationship is unknown. Mrs. John D. Rockefeller (

Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Abigail Greene Aldrich Rockefeller (October 26, 1874 – April 5, 1948) was an American socialite and philanthropist. She was a prominent member of the Rockefeller family through her marriage to financier and philanthropist John D. Rockefel ...

) purchased from the gallery a Cézannesque still life by Gorky titled ''Fruit''. Gorky may have been introduced to the gallery owner by Stuart Davis who regularly exhibited there. In 1933, Arshile Gorky became one of the first artists employed by the

Works Progress Administration The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works projects, i ...

Federal Art Project The Federal Art Project (1935–1943) was a New Deal program to fund the visual arts in the United States. Under national director Holger Cahill, it was one of five Federal Project Number One projects sponsored by the Works Progress Administrati ...

. This later came to include such artists as Alice Neel,

Lee Krasner Lenore "Lee" Krasner (born Lena Krassner; October 27, 1908 – June 19, 1984) was an American abstract expressionist painter, with a strong speciality in collage. She was married to Jackson Pollock. Although there was much cross-pollination be ...

Diego Rivera Diego María de la Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez, known as Diego Rivera (; December 8, 1886 – November 24, 1957), was a prominent Mexican painter. His large frescoes helped establish the ...

and

. In 1935, Gorky signed a three-year contract with the Guild Art Gallery (37 West Fifty-seventh Street, New York). Co-owned by Anna Walinska and

Margaret Lefranc Margaret Lefranc (''nee'' Frankel; later Schoonover) (March 15, 1907September 5, 1998) was an American painter, illustrator and editor, an American Modernist with early training as a color expressionist. Lefranc produced portraits, figures, flora ...

, but funded and directed by Lefranc, the gallery organized the artist's first solo exhibition in New York, ''Abstract Drawings by Arshile Gorky''. Notable paintings from this time include ''Landscape in the Manner of Cézanne'' (1927) and ''Landscape, Staten Island'' (1927–1928). At the close of the 1920s and into the 1930s he experimented with

cubism Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassemble ...

, eventually moving to

surrealism Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to l ...

. The painting illustrated above, ''The Artist and His Mother,'' (ca. 1926–1936) is a memorable, moving and innovative portrait. His ''The Artist and His Mother'' paintings are based on a childhood photograph taken in Van in which he is depicted standing beside his mother. Gorky made two versions; the other is in the

National Gallery of Art The National Gallery of Art, and its attached Sculpture Garden, is a national art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of char ...

Washington, DC. The painting has been likened to Ingres for simplicity of line and smoothness, to Egyptian

Funerary art Funerary art is any work of art forming, or placed in, a repository for the remains of the dead. The term encompasses a wide variety of forms, including cenotaphs ("empty tombs"), tomb-like monuments which do not contain human remains, and comm ...

for pose, to Cézanne for flat planar composition, to

Picasso Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...

for form and color. Matossian, Nouritza. ''Black Angel, The Life of Arshile Gorky''. Overlook Press, NY 2000, pp.214–215 ''Nighttime, Enigma, Nostalgia'' (1930–1934) are the series of complex works that characterize this phase of his painting. The canvas ''Portrait of Master Bill'' appears to depict Gorky's friend,

. De Kooning said: "I met a lot of artists — but then I met Gorky ... He had an extraordinary gift for hitting the nail on the head; remarkable. So I immediately attached myself to him and we became very good friends. It was nice to be foreigners meeting in some new place."''Abstract Expressionism, Creators and Critics'', edited by

Clifford Ross Clifford Ross (born October 15, 1952) is an American artist who has worked in multiple forms of media, including sculpture, painting, photography and video. His work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum, the ...

, Abrams Publishers, New York 1990, p. 44 ''de Kooning An American Master'', Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan, Alfred A. Knopf New York 2005, p.210, However recent publications contradict the claim that the painting is of de Kooning but is actually a portrait of a Swedish carpenter Gorky called Master Bill who did some work for him in exchange for Gorky giving him art lessons. Archives of American Art - Arshile Gorky - 3043

Archives of American Art - Arshile Gorky - 3043

When Gorky showed his new work to

André Breton André Robert Breton (; 19 February 1896 – 28 September 1966) was a French writer and poet, the co-founder, leader, and principal theorist of surrealism. His writings include the first ''Surrealist Manifesto'' (''Manifeste du surréalisme'') o ...

in the 1940s, after seeing the new paintings and in particular ''The Liver Is the Cock's Comb,'' Breton declared the painting to be "one of the most important paintings made in America" and he stated that Gorky was a

Surrealist Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to l ...

, which was Breton's highest compliment. The painting was shown in the Surrealists' final show at the Galérie Maeght in Paris in 1947. Michael Auping, a curator at the Modern Art Museum in

Fort Worth Fort Worth is the fifth-largest city in the U.S. state of Texas and the 13th-largest city in the United States. It is the county seat of Tarrant County, covering nearly into four other counties: Denton, Johnson, Parker, and Wise. According ...

, saw in the work a "taut sexual drama" combined with nostalgic allusions to Gorky's Armenian past. The work in 1944 shows his emergence in the 1940s from the influence of Cézanne and Picasso into his own style, and is perhaps his greatest work."Six masterpieces"
''

The Plain Dealer ''The Plain Dealer'' is the major newspaper of Cleveland, Ohio, United States. In fall 2019, it ranked 23rd in U.S. newspaper circulation, a significant drop since March 2013, when its circulation ranked 17th daily and 15th on Sunday. As of Ma ...

'', June 13, 2004. Retrieved June 10, 2010. It is over six feet high and eight feet wide, depicting "an abstract landscape filled with watery plumes of semi-transparent color that coalesce around spiky, thorn like shapes, painted in thin, sharp black lines, as if to suggest beaks and claws."

Personal life

Artist Corinne Michelle West was Gorky's muse and probably his lover, although she refused to marry him when he proposed several times. In 1941, Gorky met and married Agnes Ethel Magruder ''(maiden;'' 1921–2013) daughter of Admiral John Holmes Magruder, Jr. (1889–1963). Gorky soon nicknamed her "Mougouch", an Armenian term of endearment. They had two daughters, Maro and Yalda (renamed Natasha some months later). Maro Gorky became a painter, and married the British sculptor and writer

Matthew Spender Matthew Spender (born 1945) is an English sculptor. He is the author of ''From a High Place: A Life of Arshile Gorky'' (1999), a biography of his father-in-law, the artist Arshile Gorky, and ''A House in St John's Wood'' (2015), about his father, ...

, son of the poet Sir

Stephen Spender Sir Stephen Harold Spender (28 February 1909 – 16 July 1995) was an English poet, novelist and essayist whose work concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry by the ...

. From 1946, Gorky suffered a series of crises: his studio barn burned down (destroying his library and thirty of his paintings); he underwent a

colostomy A colostomy is an opening (stoma) in the large intestine (colon), or the surgical procedure that creates one. The opening is formed by drawing the healthy end of the colon through an incision in the anterior abdominal wall and suturing it into ...

for

cancer Cancer is a group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Possible signs and symptoms include a lump, abnormal b ...

; Mougouch had an affair with

Roberto Matta Roberto Sebastián Antonio Matta Echaurren (; November 11, 1911 – November 23, 2002), better known as Roberto Matta, was one of Chile's best-known painters and a seminal figure in 20th century abstract expressionist and surrealist art. Bio ...

. In 1948, Gorky's neck was broken and his painting arm temporarily paralyzed in a car accident, and his wife left him, taking their children with her. She was later married to British writer

Xan Fielding Alexander Wallace Fielding (26 November 1918 – 19 August 1991) was a British author, translator, journalist and traveller, who served as a Special Operations Executive (SOE) agent in Crete, France and the East Asia during World War II. The pu ...

. On July 21, 1948, after telling a neighbor and one of his students that he was going to kill himself, Gorky was found hanged in his barn studio. On a nearby wooden crate he had written "Goodbye My Loveds". Gorky is buried in North Cemetery in Sherman, Connecticut.

Legacy

Gorky's contributions to American and world art are difficult to overestimate. His work as

lyrical abstraction Lyrical abstraction is either of two related but distinct trends in Post-war Modernist painting: ''European Abstraction Lyrique'' born in Paris, the French art critic Jean José Marchand being credited with coining its name in 1947, considered ...

Dorment, Richard
"Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective at Tate Modern, review"
''

The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally. It was fo ...

'', 8 February 2010. Retrieved May 24, 2010. was a "new language. He "lit the way for two generations of American artists". The painterly spontaneity of mature works like ''The Liver is the Cock's Comb'' (1944), ''One Year the Milkweed'' (1944), and ''The Betrothal II'' (1947) immediately prefigured

Abstract expressionism Abstract expressionism is a post–World War II art movement in American painting, developed in New York City in the 1940s. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve international influence and put New York at the center of the ...

, and leaders in the New York School have acknowledged Gorky's considerable influence. Arshile Gorky had a distinct, signature style and was known for his draftsmanship. He used twisted but elegant lines to bring in 'biomorphic' forms in his abstract paintings along with an overlay of colours to create a complex landscape of lines and colours on the canvas. His oeuvre synthesizes Surrealism and the sensuous color and painterliness of the

School of Paris The School of Paris (french: École de Paris) refers to the French and émigré artists who worked in Paris in the first half of the 20th century. The School of Paris was not a single art movement or institution, but refers to the importance ...

with his own highly personal formal vocabulary. His paintings and drawings hang in every major American museum including the

, the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

, the

Art Institute of Chicago The Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago's Grant Park, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the world. Recognized for its curatorial efforts and popularity among visitors, the museum hosts approximately 1.5 mill ...

, the Metropolitan,

Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art :''see also the ''Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art'', Washington State University, Pullman, Washington Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art (JSMA) is an art museum located on the campus of the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon. The original building ...

in Eugene, and the

Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–1942), ...

in New York (which maintains the Gorky Archive), and in many worldwide, including the

Tate Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...

in London. A selection of Gorky's letters were translated and published by Karlen Mooradian in ''Arshile Gorky Adoian and The Many Worlds of Arshile Gorky'' in 1980. Matthew Spender (1999) and

Nouritza Matossian Nouritza Matossian (born April 1945) is a British Cypriot (of Armenian descent) writer, actress, broadcaster and human rights activist. She writes on the arts, contemporary music, history and Armenia.crash of American Airlines Flight 1 in 1962. In June 2005, the family of the artist established the Arshile Gorky Foundation, a not-for-profit corporation formed to further the public's appreciation and understanding of the life and artistic achievements of Arshile Gorky. The foundation is working on a catalogue raisonné of the artist's entire body of work. In October 2009, the foundation relaunched its website to provide accurate information on the artist, including a biography, bibliography, exhibition history, and list of archival sources. In October 2009 the

Philadelphia Museum of Art The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMoA) is an art museum originally chartered in 1876 for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The main museum building was completed in 1928 on Fairmount, a hill located at the northwest end of the Benjamin Fr ...

held a major Arshile Gorky exhibition: ''Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective''. On June 6, 2010, an exhibit of the same name opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles. In 2021, during routine maintenance of "The Limit," a hidden painting was discovered underneath; both paintings were exhibited and included in the latest catalogue of his work. In 2015 a fountain monument commemorating Gorky was erected in Edremit, a town near his birthplace. After the town's

People's Democracy Party People's Democracy Party ( tr, Halkın Demokrasi Partisi, HADEP) was a Kurdish population, Kurdish political party in Turkey. Murat Bozlak founded the party on 11 May 1994. The party disbanded in 2003. History Bozlak's first chairmanship P ...

administration was replaced by government appointees the water supply to the fountain was cut off, the taps were broken off, and signs with Gorky's biography in four languages - Armenian, Kurdish, English and Turkish - were removed from the monument.

Art market

Gorky's estate has been represented by

Hauser & Wirth Hauser & Wirth is a Swiss contemporary and modern art gallery. History Hauser & Wirth was founded in 1992 in Zurich by Iwan Wirth, Manuela Wirth, and Ursula Hauser, who were joined in 2000 by co-president Marc Payot. In 2020, Ewan Venters was ap ...

since 2016. It previously worked with

Gagosian Gallery Gagosian is a contemporary art gallery owned and directed by Larry Gagosian. The gallery exhibits some of the most influential artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. There are 16 gallery spaces: five in New York City; three in London; two in P ...

In popular culture

Arshile Gorky 2020 stampsheet of Armenia

*''Without Gorky'' is a documentary film about the artist, made by Cosima Spender, his granddaughter. *

Kurt Vonnegut Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007) was an American writer known for his satirical and darkly humorous novels. In a career spanning over 50 years, he published fourteen novels, three short-story collections, five plays, and ...

's novel ''

Bluebeard "Bluebeard" (french: Barbe bleue, ) is a French folktale, the most famous surviving version of which was written by Charles Perrault and first published by Barbin in Paris in 1697 in ''Histoires ou contes du temps passé''. The tale tells the st ...

'' (1987) briefly mentions Gorky. *Gorky appears as a character in

Atom Egoyan Atom Egoyan (; hy, Աթոմ Եղոյեան, translit=Atom Yeghoyan; born July 19, 1960) is a Canadian filmmaker. He was part of a loosely-affiliated group of filmmakers to emerge in the 1980s from Toronto known as the Toronto New Wave. Egoyan m ...

's 2002 movie '' Ararat'', as a child in Van and later as an adult survivor of the

living in New York. *Stephen Watts's poem ''The Verb "To Be"'' (Gramsci & Caruso, Periplum 2003) is dedicated to Gorky's memory. *Gorky appears as a character in Charles L. Mee's play about

Joseph Cornell Joseph Cornell (December 24, 1903 – December 29, 1972) was an American visual artist and film-maker, one of the pioneers and most celebrated exponents of Assemblage (art), assemblage. Influenced by the Surrealists, he was also an avant-garde e ...

, ''Hotel Cassiopeia'' (2006). *"Tristes tropiques'", Hilton Als' first story in ''

White Girls ''White Girls'' is a nonfiction book by Hilton Als, published November 5, 2013 by McSweeney's. Overview Combining elements of memoir, criticism, fiction and non-fiction, the book's essays create a portrait of "white girls", a category in whic ...

'' briefly mentions Gorky.

Bibliography

References

External links

Arshile Gorky at Gagosian Gallery
*

Artnet – Arshile Gorky Art Images

Arshile Gorky Biography: Hollis Taggart Galleries

Whistler House Museum of Art, Lowell, MA – Drawings & Paintings by Arshile Gorky: Mina Boehm Metzger Collection

The Arshile Gorky Foundation – The official website for information on the artist
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Gorky, Arshile 1904 births 1948 suicides Abstract expressionist artists Abstract painters American portrait painters 20th-century American painters American male painters 20th-century Armenian painters Armenian portrait painters Surrealist artists Grand Central School of Art faculty Federal Art Project artists Armenians from the Ottoman Empire Armenian genocide survivors Emigrants from the Ottoman Empire to the Russian Empire American people of Armenian descent Artists who committed suicide Suicides by hanging in Connecticut Painters who committed suicide 1948 deaths Soviet emigrants to the United States 20th-century American male artists