Arshile Gorky

‘Arshile Gorky. New York City’ will present paintings and works on paper, many not seen in over 40 years, that spotlight the master’s development of an artistic language that ultimately would be as singular—and consequential—as the American city that was his home.

Immersing himself in his adopted city and its artistic community of the mid-1920s, Gorky befriended the painters Stuart Davis, John Graham and Willem de Kooning while studying the works of antique, early modern and contemporary masters, such as Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, Paolo Uccello and painters of Fayum mummy portraits. Through Gorky’s prescient and deliberate rejection of originality, his work in the United States began by reflecting—and often outright quoting—the diversity of these artists as well as the cityscape of Manhattan.

Our exhibition includes works from several of Gorky’s series, including ‘Nighttime, Enigma, and Nostalgia’ (1930-1936), ‘Organization’ (1933-1937) and ‘Image in Khorkom’ (1936-1939), that encapsulate Gorky’s early efforts to refine a style that in its appropriation of various movements became, paradoxically, a vehicle for self-expression. As Gorky’s stature in New York’s art scene grew, he was increasingly inspired by, first and foremost, cubism and the mechanomorphic forms associated with Dada, surrealism and the works of Francis Picabia and Jean (Hans) Arp.

Throughout the 1930s, Gorky also worked on various mural projects in connection with the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP) and the Works Progress Administration's Federal Art Project, most notably for Newark Airport (1937) and New York World's Fair (1939).

Beginning in 1943, Gorky turned toward the rural environment, spending his summers in Virginia—where the family of his wife, Agnes Magruder, had a farm—and later in rural Connecticut. Using the same discriminating gaze he developed in the city, but with nature as a new source of inspiration, Gorky’s style flourished and matured into lyrical masterpieces such as ‘Untitled (Virginia Pastel)’ (c. 1943) and ‘Untitled (Carnival)’ (1943). Returning to his previous experiments with automatic drawing, he combined the sensory effects of his rural surroundings with memories of his childhood abroad, as they had crystallized in his new American life.

This map selectively illustrates Gorky’s relationship to New York City, the place that nurtured his vision and which he, in turn, transformed with his unique approach to art making.