Arshile Gorky

Arshile Gorky (1904-1948), Armenian-born American painter, whose work combined geometric abstraction and quasi-figurative surrealism, and who acted as a major link between European surrealism and United States abstract expressionism. Gorky was born Vosdanig Manoog Adoian at Khorkom, Van, Turkish Armenia (now in Turkey). In 1920 he emigrated to the United States and studied art at the Rhode Island School of Design and in Boston, Massachusetts. He settled in New York City in 1925. His earliest work showed the influence of Paul Cézanne, European cubism, and especially Pablo Picasso. After 1939, his works were influenced by the European surrealists and by the abstractions of Wassily Kandinsky and Joan Miró. By bringing these styles to America, Gorky exerted great influence on later American painting. In particular, he had an effect on the developing abstract expressionist style of his contemporaries Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning (he shared a studio with the latter in the late 1930s). Gorky's later works, such as The Liver is the Cock's Comb (1944, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York) and Agony (1947, Museum of Modern Art, New York City), like surrealist paintings, are expressive of his subconscious fantasies. These works are characterized by calligraphic line, related hues juxtaposed with one another, and biomorphic forms influenced by surrealism. Between 1946 and 1948, just as Gorky emerged as one of the most important artists in the United States, he experienced a series of personal tragedies that ended in his suicide.