Sep 6, 2019
Jun 7, 2007
Sep 6, 2019

Untitled

Untitled

1944

Arshile Gorky

(American, c. 1904–1948)

Oil and graphite on canvas

Framed: 68 x 82 x 5 cm (26 3/4 x 32 5/16 x 1 15/16 in.); Unframed: 49.5 x 63.5 cm (19 1/2 x 25 in.)

Contemporary Collection of The Cleveland Museum of Art 1963.152

Did you know?

Born Vostanik Manoug Adoian, the future artist changed his name to Arshile Gorky not long after arriving in the United States.

Description

During a period of violent upheaval in the Ottoman Empire, Gorky escaped the Armenian genocide by Turkish troops and emigrated to the United States. The trauma of this experience deeply impacted his subsequent career as an artist. In the year he painted Untitled, he wrote to his sister, “it is as if some ancient Armenian spirit within me moves my hand to create so far from our homeland the shapes of nature we loved…. Our beautiful Armenia which we lost and which I will repossess in my art.”

See also

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