Arshile Gorky: the tragic story of an artist with the pseudonym Maxim Gorky

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

The great mysterious artist Arshile Gorky was recognized by art critics as the last surrealist and the first abstract expressionist. His mature paintings combine a deep admiration for the pioneering modernists before him (Paul Cezanne, Pablo Picasso) and a mesmerizing ability to convey mysticism and emotion through abstract forms. Has professional success become a guarantee of happiness for Arshile Gorky, and what is the tragedy of the artist's life?

Biography

Arshile Gorky is a well-known American artist with Armenian roots who had a profound influence on the development of Abstract Expressionism. His real name is Vostanik Adoyan. He was born on April 15, 1904 in the village of Khorkom on the shores of Lake Van, near the eastern border of Ottoman Turkey. The family of the future artist became a victim of the Armenian Genocide. His father, Setrag Adoyan, was a merchant and carpenter, and his mother, Shushan Marderosyan, was a descendant of Armenian priests. The boy took an early interest in carving and painting. Akabi, one of Gorky's half-sisters, recalled: “As a child, he drew in his sleep. You could see how his hand was moving."

The difficult political situation and oppression from the Turks led to the fact that the boy's mother died of hunger early. This event, of course, left deep scars on the soul of the young artist. A painful memory of his mother later led to the painting The Artist and His Mother (1926-1936). The work is based on a photograph from 1912. In the painting, in contrast to photography, the artist's mother appears as a massive and imperishable statue, blurred at the edges, like a fading memory. In 1920, Gorky moved first to Russia and then to the United States. Then Arshile changed his name and personality, adopting the surname of the Russian writer Maxim Gorky. He told people that he was the nephew of Maxim Gorky (he did not even suspect and did not know that the Russian writer was born Alexei Maksimovich Peshkov). Then he enters the New School of Design in Boston, where he fully absorbs the influence of impressionism into his work. After moving to New York in the early 1930s, he met the artists Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko.

Creativity Gorki

It is known that Arshile Gorky relied in his work on the achievements of surrealism with the help of a dictionary of pictorial strokes and idiosyncratic forms. Significant work of the direction - "Garden in Sochi" (1941). In a catalog published in conjunction with the Hauser & Wirth exhibition of Gorky's later work, Nature, the artist's granddaughter Saskia Spender describes Gorky as a "man of secrets" and his work as "an essential embodiment of human experience that transcends birth and death." But the founder of surrealism, André Breton, compared the ecstatic stormy energy of Gorka's paintings with "the desire of a butterfly and a bee."

In 1945, Gorky responded to a questionnaire from the Museum of Modern Art, in which the museum's management asked the question: "Which of your ancestry, nationality or origin do you consider important for understanding your art?" In response, Gorky mentions his childhood and memories of Armenia, which continued to fill his mind: “I was taken from my small village when I was five years old, but all my life memories date back to those first years,” he wrote.“Those were the days when I tasted the smell of bread, for the first time I saw my red poppy, the moon. Since then, my memories have turned into icon painting, shapes and even colors; millstones, red earth, yellow wheat field, apricots, etc."

Personal life and tragedy

In New York, Arshile Gorky became a truly successful artist. However, historians note that Gorky did not find happiness in his personal life until 1941. Then he met 19-year-old Agnes Magruder, who soon became his wife. Together, the couple spent a lot of time outside of New York, in Connecticut, where Gorky created what is considered the best work of his career: abstractions inspired at the same time by Cubism, Surrealist painting, his own childhood memories and the lush landscapes that surrounded him. However, these once vivid abstractions took on more and more gloomy and depressing shades after a series of tragedies that Arshile Gorky experienced. In 1946, there was a big fire in the studio, then doctors gave him a terrible diagnosis of rectal cancer and, finally, a car accident in 1948, as a result of which the artist broke his neck. The last straw was a difficult divorce. Gorka's wife left the artist, taking the children. And then, due to depression, Arshile Gorky committed suicide on July 21, 1948 in Sherman, Connecticut. He left a simple chalk message to his friends and family: "Goodbye my beloved."

Heritage

Arshile Gorky has been hailed as one of the most influential American artists of the 20th century. During his short career, Gorky not only skillfully synthesized Cubism and Surrealism, but also ignited the first flame of Abstract Expressionism, which subsequently changed the future of art forever. To the influences of the most radical artists of the early 20th century, he added his own emotions drawn from deep personal experiences: childhood in Armenia, the death of his mother, relocation, the desire for a new life in America, passionate love, crushing depression, a frantic city and a calm natural landscape.

Many art historians believe that Gorka's works are associated with suffering during the Armenian Genocide. Gorki's life and his work were tragically cut short - he committed suicide in 1948. But his drawings and paintings remain one of the most mysterious and interesting artistic creations of the 20th century. Today his works are in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Tate Gallery in London, the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and others.