Gagosian Gallery presents Arshile Gorky’s exhibition

PanARMENIAN.Net - Gagosian Gallery presents an exhibition of paintings and drawings by Arshile Gorky.

Centered on the recent discovery of Untitled (Pastoral), a painting from 1947 that has never before been exhibited, “1947” includes paintings and drawings executed by the artist during the last year of his life. Untitled (Pastoral) was found in 2010 during the reframing of the painting Pastoral from the same series. The former was set behind Pastoral on the same stretcher, and remained covered for sixty-four years, thus its surface is startlingly fresh and vivid. In addition to the newly discovered painting, “1947” features a number of works drawn from international collections that have not been shown in New York for more than twenty years including The Limit, a formally audacious painting that was unveiled at Julien Levy Gallery in February 1948, artdaily reported.

Reviewing this exhibition in The Nation, Clement Greenberg commented: “Gorky at last arrives at himself and takes his place… among the very few contemporary American painters whose work is of more than national importance”. The painting was last shown in “Arshile Gorky: 1904-48, A Retrospective”, at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 1982.

Arshile Gorky was born Vostanik Manoog Adoian c.1902, in Khorkom, Armenia. He escaped the Armenian genocide in 1915, emigrated to the U.S. in 1920, and changed his name in the process of reinventing his identity. He attended the New School of Design, Boston (1922) and the Grand Central School of Art, New York City (1925). He took his own life in Connecticut in 1948. Major recent exhibitions include “Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective of Drawings,“ Whitney Museum of American Art (2003, traveled to Menil Collection, Houston in 2004). “Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective” opened at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2009 and traveled to the Tate Modern, London and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.