Past Exhibition

Arshile Gorky

Abstracted forms are painted in grass green, black, pepper red, butter yellow, tawny beige, rose pink, and a few touches of ocean blue in this horizontal composition. The paint is applied thinly, almost like watercolor wash. Translucent layers of paint drip down the canvas and knit the colors and shapes together. Most of the forms create a roughly pyramidal shape at the center. Some are vaguely square-shaped while others are oval, circular, or triangular. Many of the forms are outlined in black, and some have spots of color at their centers. For instance, a cluster of shapes near the lower right includes two canted parallelograms outlined with black. One has an emerald-green oval at its center and the other a black oval. Other shapes in that area include a rust-red triangle, a solid black anvil-shaped form, and a butternut-orange circle surrounded by vibrant yellow. A caramel-brown area spans the bottom edge of the canvas. The artist signed and dated the lower left corner, “A. Gorky 44.”
Arshile Gorky, One Year the Milkweed, 1944, oil on canvas, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund, 1979.13.2

Details

  • Dates

    -

  • Locations

    East Building, Mezzanine
Abstracted forms are painted in grass green, black, pepper red, butter yellow, tawny beige, rose pink, and a few touches of ocean blue in this horizontal composition. The paint is applied thinly, almost like watercolor wash. Translucent layers of paint drip down the canvas and knit the colors and shapes together. Most of the forms create a roughly pyramidal shape at the center. Some are vaguely square-shaped while others are oval, circular, or triangular. Many of the forms are outlined in black, and some have spots of color at their centers. For instance, a cluster of shapes near the lower right includes two canted parallelograms outlined with black. One has an emerald-green oval at its center and the other a black oval. Other shapes in that area include a rust-red triangle, a solid black anvil-shaped form, and a butternut-orange circle surrounded by vibrant yellow. A caramel-brown area spans the bottom edge of the canvas. The artist signed and dated the lower left corner, “A. Gorky 44.”
Arshile Gorky, One Year the Milkweed, 1944, oil on canvas, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund, 1979.13.2

Overview: 41 of Arshile Gorky's paintings and drawings from the 1940s established the artist as a pioneer of abstract expressionism. Works in the exhibition came from the collections of the National Gallery and other public and private lenders.

Organization: The exhibition was organized by the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in cooperation with the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, and the National Gallery of Art, Washington. Michael Auping, chief curator at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, was curator of the exhibition. Mark Rosenthal, curator of 20th-century art, coordinated the show for the National Gallery.

Sponsor: The exhibition and catalogue were supported by a grant from The Henry Luce Foundation, with additional funding from the T.J. Brown and C.A. Lupton Foundation, Fort Worth.

Attendance: 59,116

Catalog: Arshile Gorky: The Breakthrough Years, organized by Michael Auping with essays by Dore Ashton, Michael Auping, and Matthew Spender. Fort Worth: Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, 1995.

Brochure: Arshile Gorky: The Breakthrough Years, by Isabelle Dervaux. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1995.

Other Venues:

  • Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, 10/13/1995–12/31/1995
  • Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, 01/13/1996–03/17/1996

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