Philadelphia to host exhibition of Arshile Gorky's paintings

PanARMENIAN.Net - Philadelphia Museum of Art has organized a traveling exhibition displaying the works of Arshile Gorky, the founder of Armenian abstract art. A Retrospective will premier at the Museum and present 180 paintings, sculptures and works on paper reflecting the full scope of Gorky's prolific career.



The Retrospective is the first major exhibition of its type since 1981 and the first to benefit from the publication of three biographies of the artist. This will be the first major museum exhibition to highlight the artist's Armenian heritage and examine the impact of Gorky's experience of the Armenian Genocide on his life and work.



Philadelphia exhibition titled «Arshile Gorky. Retrospective» will be organized from October 21, 2009 till January 10, 2010. It will then travel to Tate Modern, London (February 10 - May 3, 2010) and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (June 6 - September 20, 2010) following its debut in Philadelphia.



Arshile Gorky (Vosdanig Adoian) was born in 1904 in the Western Armenian village of Khork, near Lake Van. During the 1915 Armenian Genocide, Turkish troops drove Gorky's family and thousands of others out of Van on a death march to the frontier of Caucasian Armenia. Suffering from starvation in 1919, during a time of severe deprivation for the Armenian refugees, Gorky's mother died in his arms. The artist later left for United States where he changed his name to Arshile Gorky.