A Guide to the Life and Art of Arshile Gorky

Arshile Gorky, born Vosdanig Adoian, was a twentieth-century Armenian-American painter who helped lead the abstract expressionism movement in the United States. Born around 1904 in an Armenian/Kurdish province now known as Turkey, Gorky infused much of his work with elements of his experience as a child growing up during the Armenian genocide. He and his sister sought refuge in the United States in 1920, a little more than a decade after his father emigrated there. Gorky began attending the National Academy of Design and the Grand Central School of Art in New York City four years later. He reveled in the painting process and quickly became a part-time instructor at both schools.

Gorky infused his work with the knowledge of those around him. Many of his mentors were his friends, and much of his artistic content derived from his own subjective feelings finding their place in the reality of his lived experience. For New York-based artists, Gorky’s compositions, brushwork, and sketches served as an inspiration, propelling their artistic endeavors as abstract expressionists.

Arshile Gorky was one of the few artists of his time whose work could straddle both surrealism and abstract expressionism. Here’s an overview of his life:

• Beginnings: Born around 1904, Arshile grew up along the eastern border of an Armenian/Kurdish province in the village of Khorkom. As the Armenian genocide progressed, his mother died from starvation after a death march in 1919. In 1920, Arshile and his younger sister emigrated to the United States, where they stayed in New England with their father, who had emigrated to the US to escape the Turkish military draft in 1908.
• Early training: In 1922, he enrolled in the New School of Design in Boston, where he spent the next two years immersing himself in the art world. Two years later, he moved to New York City, enrolled at the National Academy of Design and the Grand Central School of Art, and soon became a part-time instructor. He supplemented his education by visiting museums and galleries and consuming art books and magazines that subjected him to avant-garde European art, impressionism, and artists like Paul Cézanne, Joan Miró, and Pablo Picasso.
• Relationships in the art community: During the 1930s, Arshile became immersed in the art community and began to build a relationship with peers such as John Graham, Willem de Kooning, Stuart Davis, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko. As a group, they formed the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project, a New Deal art program that President Roosevelt sponsored at the suggestion of painter George Biddle to help stimulate the economy. On the side, Gorky began to exhibit his artwork at the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.
• Learning new techniques: During World War II, surrealist artists fled for New York, and Arshile built new friendships with individuals like André Breton and Roberto Matta, who inspired him to experiment with new drawing techniques and explore the natural world. During this time, Arshile entered into his second marriage and expanded his family with the birth of his two daughters.
• Tragedy strikes: In the early 1940s, Arshile began incorporating surrealist elements and abstract biomorphic forms—abstract forms or images reminiscent of living forms such as plants and human bodies—into his work. These new approaches, along with his new marriage and young daughters, invigorated his work. He tapped into childhood memories and merged them with observations of his surroundings, taking a more abstract approach to his paintings. But in the mid-1940s, Gorky’s life took a dramatic turn when a fire erupted in his studio, damaging much of the property. Shortly after, he became terminally ill with rectal cancer, then experienced a serious car accident. Additionally, his marriage to Mougouch Fielding began to unravel. On July 21, 1948, Arshile died by suicide.
• Lasting impressions: Gorky’s body of work left a seminal impression on American art. Today, you can view his art at galleries and museums worldwide, some of which include a retrospective at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art in DC, Yale University Art Gallery in Connecticut, and the Museum of Modern Art.

Here are a few of his top works:

1. 1. The Artist and His Mother (1926-1942): In this composition, Arshile painted a snapshot reminiscent of his childhood with him and his mother looking directly at the viewer. Painted in light pastel colors, Arshile (as a child) stands next to his mother, who dons a white apron.
2. 2. Staten Island (1927): A beautiful and vibrant painting that exhibits Cézanne’s strong influence on Arshile, the artist painted this while living on Staten Island. The piece is representative of some of his earlier explorations of the natural world.
3. 3. The Liver is the Cock’s Comb (1944): This piece is one of Arshile’s more well-known works. He utilizes techniques from both the cubism and surrealism aesthetic, and the subjects take their shape in loose forms and bold colors, which come together to resemble a rooster-like figure.
4. 4. Untitled (1944): Gorky completed this piece, which is part of a larger series of studies, while living in rural Virginia. His emphasis on vibrant colors, textures, and expressive contour speaks volumes to the untethered freedom he found in the natural world.

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