Story of Arshile Gorky

Arshile Gorky(Vosdanig Adoyan) was born sometime between 1902 and 1904 in the region of Van. After successfully escaping from massacres, Gorky migrated to the United States where he started his career as a painter. Horrific experiences of his early years would remain in his thoughts and even influence his art, making him a major figure in surrealism and one of the founders of abstract expressionism movement. His name nowadays stands to abound the greatest Ameican artists of the 20th century. He is considered one of the great American artists of the 20th century.

In March 1919, 14-year-old Vosdanig Manoog Adoian watched his mother starve to death, one of the countless victims of the Ottoman Turkish effort to displace or exterminate the empire’s Armenian population. Years later, after migrating to the United States and adopting the name Arshile Gorky, the boy-turned-artist came across a photograph of himself and his mother taken in 1912, when he was eight. The photograph becomes the touchstone for The Artist and His Mother, which would preoccupy Gorky on and off from 1926 until about 1942. Both an exploration of modern painting and an emotional evocation of personal and national tragedy, it is one of the most powerful portraits of the 20th century.

I don’t like that word, “finish.” When something is finished, that means it’s dead, doesn’t it? I believe in everlastingness. I never finish a painting—I just stop working on it for a while.

Arshile Gorky, 1948

Discover Gorky's Art

The Artist and His Mother

The Eye-Spring

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