Arshile Gorky

As a significant influence on the rise of the Abstract Expressionist movement, Arshile Gorky played a pivotal role in solidifying New York as a crucial hub for the arts, thereby positioning the United States as the cultural capital of the postwar world.

Biography of Arshile Gorky

Arshile Gorky's birthdate is uncertain. Although 1904 is widely accepted, the exact date remains a mystery due to the artist's habit of changing it each year while in New York. As a child, Gorky survived the Armenian genocide by the Ottoman Turks. His family was displaced, and in 1919, Gorky's mother died of starvation in his arms. His father, who had moved to the United States in 1908 to escape the Turkish military draft, settled in Providence, Rhode Island. Gorky joined his father in 1920 at the age of 15.

Gorky was primarily self-taught before coming to the United States. Upon his immigration, he enrolled in the New School of Design in Boston from 1922 to 1924. This move exposed him to artistic modernism, particularly the works of Paul Cézanne, whose influence became significant in Gorky's early work. Around 1925, Gorky relocated to New York, where he quickly became immersed in the emerging artistic scene. Here, he encountered the pioneering works of Pablo Picasso and the early creations of Spanish Surrealist painter Joan Miró.

In New York, Gorky formed personal and artistic bonds with artists like Stuart Davis and fellow émigrés such as Ukrainian John D. Graham and Dutch artist Willem de Kooning. The city's vibrant artistic environment nurtured Gorky's early style, which drew heavily from Cézanne's compositional techniques and Picasso's Synthetic Cubist forms. Additionally, the vivid palettes of the Fauves and European Expressionists left a lasting impact on Gorky's artistic development.

The fundamental elements of Gorky's early style solidified during his initial five years in New York: transitioning from Cézanne-inspired landscapes and still lifes to a flatter, more experimental rendering influenced by the Synthetic Cubism of Picasso and Georges Braque. The extent to which Gorky absorbed these influences in his early works mirrored the dynamic artistic environment of New York at the time. This environment fostered continual experimentation and innovation, providing Gorky with a platform for growth.

During the 1930s, Gorky's artistic endeavors began to gain public recognition. In 1930, he was featured in a group exhibition of emerging artists organized by Alfred Barr, Jr., the influential director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The following year, in 1931, Gorky held his inaugural solo exhibition of paintings at the Mellon Galleries in Philadelphia. From 1935 to 1941, Gorky, alongside De Kooning, collaborated on projects for the Works Progress Administration's Federal Art Project, a significant government initiative aimed at providing work for artists during the Great Depression. One notable project initiated by Gorky under the WPA was a series of murals at the Newark Airport in New Jersey.

In 1935, four of Gorky's paintings were showcased in the renowned exhibition "Abstract Painting in America" at The Whitney Museum of American Art. This exhibition garnered increasing attention from both critics and the public, further establishing Gorky's reputation. In 1938, Gorky held his premier solo exhibition in New York at the Boyer Galleries.

As the 1940s unfolded, Gorky's artistic direction took a new course. His mature style began to reflect Surrealist ideas and forms from Europe, although he distanced himself from the Surrealists' emphasis on the unconscious. Additionally, his innovative approach to applying paint anticipated, and possibly influenced, the Action Painting technique embraced by the Abstract Expressionist painters of the subsequent decade.

In 1941, Gorky married Agnes Magruder, who was twenty years younger than him, and together they had two daughters. In January 1946, a fire destroyed Gorky's studio, located on his wife's property in Connecticut, and with it, most of his artwork. Just a month later, Gorky received a devastating cancer diagnosis, which greatly affected his physical and emotional well-being. It was later revealed that Agnes was having an affair with Gorky's friend and fellow artist, Roberto Matta. This revelation led to the dissolution of their marriage, with Agnes leaving with the children. Shortly thereafter, Gorky was involved in a car accident that further worsened his declining health. The culmination of these heartbreaking events led Gorky to take his own life on July 21, 1948, by hanging himself in his Connecticut home.

Arshile Gorky's Art Style

While typically classified as an Abstract Expressionist, it may be more fitting to view Arshile Gorky as a direct precursor to the Abstract Expressionists. His fusion of Expressionist and Surrealist aesthetics introduced New York-based artists to groundbreaking methods of incorporating the prevailing European modernist styles of that era. 

It is important to recognize that while Gorky drew heavily from external influences throughout his career, he never simply replicated his sources. Instead, he meticulously analyzed them for their structures and meanings, selecting elements that he could later incorporate into his creations. Gorky, as an adept of the early modernist tradition, became a master in his own right. His body of work acted as a bridge between the prewar European art scene and the postwar American art world. A notable example of his significance is when André Breton actively sought Gorky to join the Surrealism movement. Gorky even permitted Breton to title some of his paintings. However, Gorky, known for his solitary disposition, eventually distanced himself from Breton and the Surrealist movement. 

Many of Gorky's artworks are reflections of both his traumatic past as a survivor of genocide and the memories of the serene beauty of his early life in Armenia. Through the act of painting, Gorky found a way to reconcile his largely tragic existence by transforming real people and objects, whether remembered or present, into abstracted and controlled new realities.

Gorky was a pioneer in the practice of naming his abstract compositions with titles directly referencing specific objects and places. This approach fused objective reality with subjective emotion in his works.