Presentation of Arshile Gorky's inspirations and work, as part of the Art & Money class at ESSEC Business School Paris, 2010

1. Florentine Poncelet
Art & Money ESSEC class, February 2010

2. Elements of biography: a tragic destiny
Real name: Vosdanig Adoian, Armenian-born American Painter
1904-1948
 1914: his father left the family and emigrated to America
 1915: Armenian genocide, A. Gorky and his family emigrated from Turkish
Armenia to Yerevan
 1919: his mother died from starvation
 1920: A. Gorky, aged 16, emigrated to the USA
 The 20’s and 30’s: he studied design and painting in renowned American
schools in Boston and NY, then became a teacher at the NY Grand Central
School of Art. First pieces of work.
 The 40’s: masterpieces period, liberation of expressionism
 1948: He committed suicide

3. Paintings related to his roots
 His work has been haunted by the painful memory of his
roots: the Armenian genocide, the loss of his parents, and
the emigration
 There are two redundant characters in his collection: his
mother and the Armenian landscape

4.  The artist and his mother
1926-1936

5.  Garden in Sochi, 1941 (series)

6.  Garden in Sochi, 1941 (series)

7. The question of the influences: is Gorky just an imitator of Surrealism ?
 Influences: European artists (school of Paris) such as Cézanne, Matisse,
Picasso, Miro
In his first pieces of art, he worked through the knowledge of these
modern art masters
 An under-estimated artist :
- American experts first rejected his work pretending he was just copying
surrealist European painters : the USA wanted their own artistic
identity
- His obsession for accuracy/preparatory work was opposed to an expected
form of spontaneity in a post-war context

8.  Portrait of Vartoosh, 1927
Pencil on card

9.  Painter and model, 1931
Lithograph on paper

10.  Nighttime, enigma, nostalgia, 1931 Chinese ink on paper

11. Or a precursor of Abstract Expressionism?
 Later on, he found his own style…
- Explosion of colors (Colorfield)
- Monumentalization of the pieces
- disappearance of outlines
- drips of paint (Action Painting, Pollock)
 … And eventually public opinion considered him as the first Abstract
Expressionist painter
Now he’s renowned as one of the greatest American painter of the XXth
century
 Precursor of the School of New-York and one of the influences of De
Kooning or Pollock

12.  Waterfall, 1941

13. The genius of an Expressionist
 Intermediary between the European heritage
and the American post-war modernity
 He’s described as the last surrealist and the first
abstract expressionnist painter
 Exhibitions in Paris at Centre Pompidou
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lx0Q9KB7EcI&feature=related

14.  Thank you for your attention!