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Arshile
Gorky/Works and biography
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Untitled
summer 1944 |
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Arshile Gorky was born Vosdanik Adoian in the village
of Khorkom, province of Van, Armenia, on April 15, 1904.
The Adoians became refugees from the Turkish invasion;
Gorky himself left Van in 1915 and arrived in the United
States in February 1920. He stayed with relatives in
Watertown, Massachusetts, and with his father, who had
settled in Providence, Rhode Island. By 1922 he lived
in Watertown and taught at the New School of Design
in Boston. In 1925 he moved to New York and changed
his name to Arshile Gorky. He entered the Grand Central
School of Art in New York as a student but soon became
an instructor of drawing; from 1926 to 1931 he was a
member of the faculty. Throughout the 1920s Gorky’s
painting was influenced by Georges Braque, Paul Cézanne,
and, above all, Pablo Picasso.
In 1930 Gorky’s work was included in a group show
at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. During the
thirties he associated closely with Stuart Davis, Willem
de Kooning, and John Graham. Gorky’s first solo
show took place at the Mellon Galleries in Philadelphia
in 1931. From 1935 to 1937 he worked under the WPA Federal
Art Project on murals for Newark Airport. His involvement
with the WPA continued into 1941. Gorky’s first
solo show in New York was held at the Boyer Galleries
in 1938. The San Francisco Museum of Art exhibited his
work in 1941.
In the 1940s he was profoundly affected by the work
of European Surrealists, particularly Joan Miró,
André Masson, and Matta. By 1944 he met André
Breton and became a friend of other Surrealist emigrés
in this country. Gorky’s first exhibition at the
Julien Levy Gallery in New York took place in 1945.
From 1942 to 1948 he worked for part of each year in
the countryside of Connecticut or Virginia. A succession
of personal tragedies, including a fire in his studio
that destroyed much of his work, a serious operation,
and an automobile accident, preceded Gorky’s death
by suicide on July 21, 1948, in Sherman, Connecticut.
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