Arshile Gorky The Artist and His Mother (ca. 1926-1936)
Arshile Gorky was an Armenian-born American painter who had a seminal influence on Abstract Expressionism. In 1915 Gorky fled Lake Van duuring the Armenian Genocide and escaped with his mother and his three sisters into Russian-controlled territory. In the aftermath of the genocide, Gorky’s mother died of starvation in Yerevan in 1919.
When Gorky showed his new work to André Breton in the 1940s, after seeing the new paintings and in particular The Liver is the Cock’s Comb, Breton declared the painting to be “one of the most important paintings made in America” and he stated that Gorky was a Surrealist, which was Breton’s highest compliment
This peak period of Gorky’s work was cut short. His final years were filled with immense pain and heartbreak. His studio barn burned down, he underwent a colostomy for cancer, his neck was broken and his painting arm temporarily paralyzed in a car accident, and his wife of seven years left him, taking their children with her. Gorky hanged himself in Sherman, Connecticut, in 1948, at the age of 44.
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