Gorky, Arshile (1904-1948) - 1945 Childs Companions (Christie's New York, 2014)
Oil and graphite on canvas; 86.7 x 117.2 cm.
Arshile Gorky (born Vosdanig Manoug Adoian; April 15, 1904 – July 21, 1948) was an Armenian-American painter, who had a seminal influence on Abstract Expressionism. As such, his works were often speculated to have been informed by the suffering and loss he experienced of the Armenian Genocide.[1]
Gorky was born Vostanik Manuk Adoian on April 15, 1904, in the village of Khorgom, situated on the shores of Lake Van in the Ottoman Empire. In later years he was 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.[2]
In 1915 Gorky fled Lake Van during the Armenian Genocide and escaped with his mother and his three sisters into Russian-controlled territory. In the aftermath of the genocide, Gorky's mother died of starvation in Yerevan 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 noble[3] (taking the Georgian name Arshile/Archil), and even telling people he was a relative of the Russian writer Maxim Gorky.[4]
Gorky's contributions to American and world art are difficult to overestimate. His work as lyrical abstraction[18][19][20][21][22] was a "new language.[18] He "lit the way for two generations of American artists".[18] 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, and leaders in the New York School have acknowledged Gorky's considerable influence.
But his oeuvre is a phenomenal achievement in its own right, synthesizing Surrealism and the sensuous color and painterliness of the School of Paris with his own highly personal formal vocabulary. His paintings and drawings hang in every major American museum including the National Gallery of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York (which maintains the Gorky Archive), and in many worldwide, including the Tate in London.
A number of English translations of letters allegedly written by Gorky in Armenian to his sisters are now considered to be fakes produced by Karlen Mooradian, a nephew of Gorky, in the late 1960s and early 1970s (especially those expressing nationalistic sentiments or imparting specific meanings to his paintings). The letters often described moods of melancholy, and expressed loneliness and emptiness, nostalgia for his country, while bitterly and vividly recalling the circumstances of his mother's death. The contents of the fake letters heavily influenced the authors of books written about Gorky and his art during the 1970s and 1980s.
His daughter, the painter Maro Gorky, married Matthew Spender, son of the British writer Sir Stephen Spender.
15 of his paintings and drawings were destroyed in a plane crash in 1962[23]
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.[24]
In October 2009 the Philadelphia Museum of Art held a major Arshile Gorky exhibition: Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective [25][26] On June 6, 2010, an exhibit of the same name opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles.[27]
From 1946, Gorky suffered a series of crises: his studio barn burned down, he underwent a colostomy for cancer, and Mougouch had an affair with Roberto Matta. In 1948, his neck was broken and his painting arm temporarily paralyzed in a car accident, and his wife left him, taking their children with her. She later married the British writer and war hero, Xan Fielding.[17]
Gorky hanged himself in Sherman, Connecticut, in 1948, at the age of 44. He is buried in North Cemetery in Sherman, Connecticut.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arshile_Gorky
Gorky, Arshile (1904-1948) - 1945 Childs Companions (Christie's New York, 2014)
Oil and graphite on canvas; 86.7 x 117.2 cm.
Arshile Gorky (born Vosdanig Manoug Adoian; April 15, 1904 – July 21, 1948) was an Armenian-American painter, who had a seminal influence on Abstract Expressionism. As such, his works were often speculated to have been informed by the suffering and loss he experienced of the Armenian Genocide.[1]
Gorky was born Vostanik Manuk Adoian on April 15, 1904, in the village of Khorgom, situated on the shores of Lake Van in the Ottoman Empire. In later years he was 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.[2]
In 1915 Gorky fled Lake Van during the Armenian Genocide and escaped with his mother and his three sisters into Russian-controlled territory. In the aftermath of the genocide, Gorky's mother died of starvation in Yerevan 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 noble[3] (taking the Georgian name Arshile/Archil), and even telling people he was a relative of the Russian writer Maxim Gorky.[4]
Gorky's contributions to American and world art are difficult to overestimate. His work as lyrical abstraction[18][19][20][21][22] was a "new language.[18] He "lit the way for two generations of American artists".[18] 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, and leaders in the New York School have acknowledged Gorky's considerable influence.
But his oeuvre is a phenomenal achievement in its own right, synthesizing Surrealism and the sensuous color and painterliness of the School of Paris with his own highly personal formal vocabulary. His paintings and drawings hang in every major American museum including the National Gallery of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York (which maintains the Gorky Archive), and in many worldwide, including the Tate in London.
A number of English translations of letters allegedly written by Gorky in Armenian to his sisters are now considered to be fakes produced by Karlen Mooradian, a nephew of Gorky, in the late 1960s and early 1970s (especially those expressing nationalistic sentiments or imparting specific meanings to his paintings). The letters often described moods of melancholy, and expressed loneliness and emptiness, nostalgia for his country, while bitterly and vividly recalling the circumstances of his mother's death. The contents of the fake letters heavily influenced the authors of books written about Gorky and his art during the 1970s and 1980s.
His daughter, the painter Maro Gorky, married Matthew Spender, son of the British writer Sir Stephen Spender.
15 of his paintings and drawings were destroyed in a plane crash in 1962[23]
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.[24]
In October 2009 the Philadelphia Museum of Art held a major Arshile Gorky exhibition: Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective [25][26] On June 6, 2010, an exhibit of the same name opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles.[27]
From 1946, Gorky suffered a series of crises: his studio barn burned down, he underwent a colostomy for cancer, and Mougouch had an affair with Roberto Matta. In 1948, his neck was broken and his painting arm temporarily paralyzed in a car accident, and his wife left him, taking their children with her. She later married the British writer and war hero, Xan Fielding.[17]
Gorky hanged himself in Sherman, Connecticut, in 1948, at the age of 44. He is buried in North Cemetery in Sherman, Connecticut.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arshile_Gorky