Animations:

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Admission is always free

6th and Constitution Ave NW
Washington, DC 20565

Must-Sees at the National Gallery

Make the most of your visit
Learn more
Exhibitions & Events
America’s 250th

Celebrating American art and artists
Art & Artists
Open Call

Artists Reimagining the Collection
Meet the 50 makers selected from more than 1,600 submissions

Open 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m.

Visit
Admission is always free

6th and Constitution Ave NW
Washington, DC 20565

Must-Sees at the National Gallery

Make the most of your visit
Learn more
Exhibitions & Events
America’s 250th

Celebrating American art and artists
Art & Artists
Open Call

Artists Reimagining the Collection
Meet the 50 makers selected from more than 1,600 submissions

Audio Tour Stop 21

One Year the Milkweed, Arshile Gorky

Part of East Building: Featured Selections (한국인)

One Year the Milkweed (Korean)

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

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