Arshile Gorky

The American painter Arshile Gorky (1905-1948) created a personal language of form dealing with the iconography of the unconscious that enabled him to extend surrealism in the 20th century.

Born in Turkish Armenia, Vosdanig Manoog Adoian changed his name in 1925 to Arshile Gorky, meaning the "bitter one." He emigrated to the United States with his sister at the age of 15. After studying briefly at the Rhode Island School of Design, he moved to Boston in 1923, where he secured part-time work. He continued his studies at the New School of Design, where he was engaged as instructor in 1924. The following year Gorky moved to New York City, where for the next 6 years he was on the faculty of the Grand Central School of Design. In this period Gorky's work drew on a variety of sources, including Camille Corot, J. A. D. Ingres, and Pablo Picasso.

The key work of Gorky's early period is the Artist and His Mother (ca. 1926-1929), a double portrait composed of cool flowing shapes which evokes a mood of stillness. Although this portrait is reserved in terms of its painterly qualities, relying heavily on the fine flowing line of Ingres, Gorky was simultaneously exploring the colorspace synthesis of Paul Cézanne (Staten Island, 1927/1928) and the surrealist-inspired figurative phase of Picasso (Still Life, 1929). This latter interest, in surrealist biomorphic shape, Gorky mastered and extended during the next 2 decades.

Gorky's work during the 1930s was divided between drawing and painting. The rather geometrical Organization Series (1933-1936) was probably a result of the artist's awareness of the work of Josef Albers. Gorky's Aviation mural (a Federal Art Project commission now lost), the theme of which was repeated in the Aviation murals for the 1939 New York World's Fair, broke away from the more enclosed forms of the Organization Series and exploited photomontage and cubist pictorial space. As public art, Gorky's murals make no attempt to create an easy visual experience for the layman.

Toward the end of the 1930s, as Gorky came under the influence of the work of André Masson, his work seemed to depend less on explicit references verifiable to the spectator and more on a felt memory expressed in his developing, vibrant palette. The Image of Xhorkhom (ca. 1936) exists in four versions and, like the numerous versions of his Garden in Sochi (1938-1940), ostensibly refers by its title to the remembrance of things past. The latter series is a development from the former, with the images grown more delicate and cleaner in shape, the surfaces less densely painted, and the legibility of the artist's forms increasingly ambiguous as Gorky achieved a complete metamorphosis of floral and anatomical imagery.

Gorky's last years witnessed a further extension of surrealist devices, stimulated by the presence in America of Roberto Matta Echaurren and later by the arrival of the remaining coterie of surrealists headed by André Breton. Gorky's application of paint achieved a greater freedom, the resulting images shining through the thin pigment, as in the Pirate I (1942). His palette increased in intensity, and great puffs of florescent color seemed to vibrate from The Liver Is the Cock's Comb (1944). But during the same period Gorky could turn to the arabesque line of Ingres and the delicate hues found in his Good Afternoon, Mrs. Lincoln (1944). In the works of the last 2 years of his life, of which Agony (1947) and Betrothal II (1947) are exemplary, Gorky successfully achieved the visual metaphors of felt new experience. He committed suicide on July 21, 1948.

Further Reading

Harold Rosenberg, Arshile Gorky: The Man, the Time, the Idea (1962), is a valuable critical interpretation of Gorky and his paintings but the illustrations are poor. One of the most important critical studies of Gorky is Ethel K. Schwabacher, Arshile Gorky (1957), which contains biographical and bibliographical information. For a study of Gorky's work with excellent illustrations see Julien Levy, Arshile Gorky (1966), which includes a study of the artist's last years by a close friend. □

Gorky, Arshile ( Vosdanig Manoog Adoian) (1904–1948). Armenian-born American painter, one of the leading figures of Abstract Expressionism. During the First World War his father emigrated to the USA to avoid conscription into the Turkish army and his mother died a victim of Turkish persecution of the Armenians. Gorky managed to escape with his sister, and they found their way to America, settling first at Providence, Rhode Island. In his new country he adopted the pseudonym Arshile Gorky, the first name being derived from the Greek hero Achilles, the second (Russian for ‘the bitter one') from the Russian writer Maxim Gorky, to whom he sometimes liked to claim he was related (evidently not realizing that the writer's name also was a pseudonym). In 1925 he moved to New York, where he first studied and then taught (1926–31) at the Grand Central School of Art. Gorky took a romantic view of his vocation and is said to have hired a Hungarian violinist to play during his classes to encourage his students to put emotion in their work. His early paintings were strongly influenced by Cézanne (whom he considered ‘the greatest artist that has lived') and he also fell under the spell of Picasso, as can be seen both in the haunting The Artist and his Mother (Whitney Museum, New York, c. 1926–9), based on a photograph taken when he was a child, and in his experimentation with Cubism at this period. Much of his work of the 1930s represents an attempt to synthesize the flatness of Cubist structure (in which he was influenced also by Stuart Davis) with the improvisatory fluidity and energy of Surrealist automatism.

From 1935 to 1939 Gorky worked for the Federal Art Project, his paintings under its auspices including an abstract mural for Newark Airport, New Jersey. In the early 1940s he came into contact with the circle of European Surrealists who had emigrated to New York to escape the Second World War and under their influence (particularly that of Matta and Miró) he created the distinctive style of his last phase, featuring ‘a mass of delicately drawn, visceral shapes floating in a tangible world of brilliant transparent color. The shapes are suggestive of internal organs, brutally mutilated, or microscopic views of plants and flowers transformed into strange menacing beasts or embracing in an ecstasy of sexual fulfilment. They are at the same time living organisms, still-lifes, or landscapes, all filled with an ecstatic and disturbing sense of physical vitality and psychological conflict’ ( H. H. Arnason in Britannica Encyclopedia of American Art, 1973). However, just as Gorky began to emerge as a powerful original voice in American art, he suffered a tragic series of misfortunes. In 1946 a fire in his Connecticut studio destroyed a large proportion of his recent work, and in the same year he was operated on for cancer. In 1948 he broke his neck in an automobile accident, and when his wife left him soon afterwards he hanged himself, leaving a message chalked nearby reading ‘Goodbye My Loveds'.

Gorky has been called both the last of the great Surrealists and the first of the Abstract Expressionists, and his work in the 1940s was a potent factor in the emergence of a specifically American school of abstract art: Adolph Gottlieb wrote that he recognized ‘the vital task was a wedding of abstraction and surrealism. Out of these opposites something new could emerge, and Gorky's work is part of the evidence that this is true.’ Willem de Kooning in particular was a close friend and was greatly influenced by him.

Gorky, Arshile ( Vosdanig Manoog Adoian) (b Dzov, 15 Apr. 1904; d Sherman, Conn., 21 July 1948). American painter, born in Turkish Armenia, who formed a link between European Surrealism and American Abstract Expressionism. He emigrated to the USA in 1920 and adopted the pseudonym Arshile Gorky, the first part of the name being derived from the Greek hero Achilles, the second part (Russian for ‘the bitter one’) from the Russian writer Maxim Gorky, to whom the painter sometimes claimed he was related (evidently not realizing that the writer's name, too, was a pseudonym). In 1925 he settled in New York, where he first studied and then taught at the Grand Central School of Art. Gorky took a romantic view of his vocation and is said to have hired a Hungarian violinist to play during his classes to encourage his students to put emotion into their work. His early paintings were strongly influenced by Cézanne (whom he considered ‘the greatest artist that has lived’) and he also fell under the spell of Picasso, as can be seen both in the haunting The Artist and his Mother (c.1926–9, Whitney Mus., New York) and in his experimentation with Cubism at this period. Much of his work of the 1930s represents an attempt to synthesize the flatness of Cubist structure (in which he was influenced also by Stuart Davis) with the improvisatory fluidity and energy of Surrealist automatism.

In the early 1940s Gorky came into contact with the European Surrealists who had emigrated to New York to escape the Second World War and under their influence (particularly that of Matta and Miró) he created the distinctive style of his last phase, featuring delicately drawn shapes, suggestive of living organisms, floating in brilliant colour. However, just as Gorky began to emerge as a powerful original voice in American art, he suffered a tragic series of misfortunes. In 1946 a fire in his Connecticut studio destroyed a large proportion of his recent work, and in the same year he was operated on for cancer. In 1948 he broke his neck in an automobile accident, and when his wife left him soon afterwards he hanged himself. Gorky has been called both the last of the great Surrealists and the first of the Abstract Expressionists, and his work in the 1940s was a potent factor underlying the emergence of a specifically American school of abstract art. He was particularly influential on his friend de Kooning.

Gorky, Arshile ( Vosdanig Manoog Adoian) (1904–48). American painter, born in Turkish Armenia, who formed a link between European Surrealism and American Abstract Expressionism. He emigrated to the USA in 1920 and adopted the pseudonym Arshile Gorky, the first part of the name being derived from the Greek hero Achilles, the second part (Russ. ‘the bitter one’) from the Russian writer Maxim Gorky, to whom the painter sometimes claimed he was related (evidently not realizing that the writer's name, too, was a pseudonym). In 1925 he settled in New York, where he first studied and then taught at the Grand Central School of Art. Gorky took a romantic view of his vocation and is said to have hired a Hungarian violinist to play during his classes to encourage his students to put emotion into their work. His early paintings were strongly influenced by Cézanne (whom he considered ‘the greatest artist that has lived’) and he also fell under the spell of Picasso, as can be seen both in the haunting The Artist and his Mother (c.1926–9, Whitney Mus., New York) and in his experimentation with Cubism at this period. Much of his work of the 1930s represents an attempt to synthesize the flatness of Cubist structure (in which he was influenced also by Stuart Davis) with the improvisatory fluidity and energy of Surrealist automatism. In the early 1940s he came into contact with the European Surrealists who had emigrated to New York to escape the Second World War and under their influence (particularly that of Matta and Miró) he created the distinctive style of his last phase, featuring delicately drawn shapes, suggestive of living organisms, floating in brilliant colour. However, just as Gorky began to emerge as a powerful original voice in American art, he suffered a tragic series of misfortunes. In 1946 a fire in his Connecticut studio destroyed a large proportion of his recent work, and in the same year he was operated on for cancer. In 1948 he broke his neck in an automobile accident, and when his wife left him soon afterwards he hanged himself. Gorky has been called both the last of the great Surrealists and the first of the Abstract Expressionists, and his work in the 1940s was a potent factor underlying the emergence of a specifically American school of abstract art. He was particularly influential on his friend de Kooning.

Arshile Gorky , c.1900-48, American painter, b. Armenia as Vosdanig Adoian. He escaped the Turkish slaughter of Armenians, emigrated to the United States in 1920, studied at Boston's New School of Design, and moved to New York City in 1925. An extraordinarily fluid draftsman inspired by Ingres , Picasso , and several other artists, Gorky developed a figurative style of great refinement. A more radical turn in his art was prompted by the spontaneous automatism found in surrealism and in the works of Miró and Matta . Gorky began (c.1940) to create abstractions consisting of involved, voluptuously organic shapes and glowing colors, all enveloped in an aura of mystery. In these works he became a pioneer in the development of abstract expressionism . His reputation had already been established when, after a series of personal and professional disasters, he committed suicide at the age of 44. Gorky is well represented in American collections, e. g., in New York City, Water of the Flowery Mill is in the Metropolitan Museum and there are works at the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum.

Bibliography: See catalog by J. Levy (1966); biographies by D. Waldman (1987), M. Spender (1999), and H. Herrera (2003); H. Rosenberg, Arshile Gorky: The Man, the Time, the Idea (1962, repr. 1981); K. Mooradian, The Many Worlds of Arshile Gorky (1981); H. Rand, Arshile Gorky: The Implications of Symbols (1981); C. Zwerin, dir., Arshile Gorky (documentary film, 1982).

Gorky, Arshile (1905–48) US painter, b. Armenia. He bridged surrealism and abstract expressionism. In 1920, he emigrated to the USA, joining a group of European surrealists in New York in the 1940s. Gorky became fascinated by the work of Joan Miró, who inspired paintings, such as the versions of Garden in Sochi (1940) and Mojave (1941–42).

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