Arshile Gorky

The Life of Arshile Gorky

Arshile Gorky, earlier known as Vosdanik Adoyan was an Armenian-American painter who was born in Van, Turkey circa April 15, 1904 and died in Sherman, Connecticut on July 21, 1948. He began his work in his early 20s and his work was centralized around Expressionism, Surrealism, and Abstract Expressionism. He used his works as a way of reflecting on his traumatic past during a time when the Ottoman Turks committed genocide on the Armenian people. Gorky was mainly a self-taught painter, but after moving to the United States at the age of 15, he went to the New School of Design in Boston around the age of 17 and continued his enrollment to the age of 19. It wasn’t until later when the artist moved to New York that he achieved fame.

I.           Gorky’s Early Childhood

Gorky grew up during a time where the Armenians were persecuted and threatened by Genocide. During this time, he experienced one of his most tragic losses when his mother died of starvation in 1919.In 1908, before the genocide of the Armenians, Gorky’s father dodged the Turkish military draft by going to the United States where he lived in Rhode Island. Left with no parents to look after him and take care of him, Gorky joined his father in the United States in 1920.

II.        Artistic Training

Before moving to the United States, Gorky was mainly a self-taught artist. His enrollment in artistic schools in Boston and New York contributed to his success. After his enrollment in the National Academy of Design and the Grand Central School of Art, Gorky decided to change his name to avoid the negative perception of Armenians by the American people. Gorky found most of his inspiration from famous artists such as Pablo Picasso and Joan Miró. His early style consisted mainly of Cezanne landscapes to a more experimental painting of the surface which was inspired by the Cubism of Picasso and other less-known painters.

III.      An Emerging Artist

During the 1930s, Gorky was beginning to gain recognition from both the public and other artists. Beginning in 1930, he participated in a group show that gave emerging artists a chance to give themselves a name. A year later in 1931, Gorky had the chance of experiencing his very first solo exhibition of his works at an art gallery in Philadelphia. During the mid to late 30s, Gorky worked in a program called the Federal Art Project. This program was put into place by the government to give artists work during the Great Depression. In 1938, while working under this project, Gorky held his first solo showing at the Boyer Galleries in New York. Although he was beginning to gain national recognition for his paintings, the artist switched his style of art in a completely different direction in 1940. He began to paint using the style and ideas of Surrealism. In a biography by Charles Moffat, he explains that “at the end of the 1920s and into the 1930s he experimented with Cubism, eventually moving to Surrealism. His aim was never to imitate the work of others however, but to learn their from their aesthetic ideas and then evolve beyond it” (Moffat 2007).  Gorky’s inspiration for making such changes can be traced to the immigration of European artists during the late 30s and early 40s. Artists such as Erwin Panofsky, Max Ernst, and Andre Breton were all key artists in inspiring Gorky in changing his path.  The emergence of this style of painting in America paved way for a different style  that later became known as Abstract Expressionism. As said in an article about Arshile Gorky, “Gorky pioneered the trend of naming his abstract compositions with titles directly referring to particular objects and places, thus fusing objective reality and subjective feeling in his works” (“The Art Story,” n.d.).

IV.      Gorky’s Later Years

Although Gorky earned his fame after years of hard work, his later years would only end in tragedy. In 1941, he married a woman by the name of Agnes Magruder who was 20 years younger than he was. After 5 years of marriage, tragedy struck when Gorky’s art studio in Connecticut burned to the ground destroying nearly all of his works. Adding onto this loss, Gorky was diagnosed with cancer only a month later. After his diagnosis, it was soon found that his wife, Agnes, was having an affair with fellow artist, Robert Matta. After their breakup, his wife relocated to a different area and even took their children with her. To make his situation even worse, Gorky was involved in a car accident that only added mores stress to his life and his health. After having dealt with problem after problem, it ultimately led to the artists suicide on July 21, 1948 by hanging himself in his Connecticut home. In an article by William Feaver, he states that “Gorky, dead at 46 (or maybe he was only 44: dates vary), died at the time when he stood as good a chance as any of being singled out as the greatest living painter in the land” (Feaver 2010). This statement shows the amount of influence that Gorky had over the art of his time. He was arguably the greatest artist of his time.

Works Cited

2016. “Arshile Gorky.” http://www.theartstory.org/artist-gorky-arshile.htm (November 16, 2016).

Feaver, William. 2010. “The mysterious art of Arshile Gorky.” https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2010/feb/06/arshile-gorky-painting-william-feaver (November 29, 2016).

Moffat, Charles. 2007. “The Art History Archive – Abstract Expressionism.” http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/abstractexpressionism/Arshile-Gorky.html (December 2007).