Arshile Gorky
A Retrospective
10 Feb - 03 May 2010
Celebrating one of the most powerful and poetic American artists of his generation, Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective examines the extraordinary contribution of this seminal figure in Abstract Expressionism.
Born in Turkish Armenia, probably in 1904, Vosdanik Adoian fled the massacres of 1915 and eventually arrived in America in 1920. There he reinvented himself as Arshile Gorky and, with little formal training, absorbed European Modernism through both his studies and his teaching.
The result was a distinctive synthesis of artistic styles that pushed beyond the creative boundaries of Surrealism.This retrospective covers Gorky's 25-year artistic career which was cut short by his suicide in 1949. With an emphasis on his uniquely lyrical paintings of the 1940s, it will be the most important exhibition of his work for over twenty years.
Organised with the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles
Born in Turkish Armenia, probably in 1904, Vosdanik Adoian fled the massacres of 1915 and eventually arrived in America in 1920. There he reinvented himself as Arshile Gorky and, with little formal training, absorbed European Modernism through both his studies and his teaching.
The result was a distinctive synthesis of artistic styles that pushed beyond the creative boundaries of Surrealism.This retrospective covers Gorky's 25-year artistic career which was cut short by his suicide in 1949. With an emphasis on his uniquely lyrical paintings of the 1940s, it will be the most important exhibition of his work for over twenty years.
Organised with the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles