Brilliant artist with a tragic fate, who survived a huge number of difficult trials in his short life.

Arshile Gorky (April 15, 1904 – July 21, 1948) was a famous American artist of Armenian origin. Arshile Gorky also created many vivid paintings in the style of surrealism, the best masterpieces of the painter’s work today are in the largest museums in the United States. The biography of this outstanding person is full of tragic events, and his life is an example of the difficult fate of a genius from art.

Arshile Gorky is the artist’s creative pseudonym, with which he signed his works throughout his professional career. The master changed his real name Vosdanig Manug Adoyan to a sonorous nickname shortly after moving to America and repeatedly told his acquaintances that he was a distant relative of the proletarian writer Maxim Gorky.

Biography of Arshile Gorky

Arshile Gorki was born on April 15, 1904 in the village of Khorkom, on the territory of the Ottoman Empire (modern Turkey). When the boy was four years old, his father emigrated to America to avoid being drafted into the army, and all the worries for the maintenance of three daughters and a son fell on the mother’s shoulders.

At the age of eleven, the future artist experienced a severe nervous shock during the brutal Armenian genocide organized by the Turkish authorities. The family of little Vosdanig miraculously managed to escape from the bloody massacre to Yerevan. Soon, the boy’s two older sisters went to his father in the United States, and he remained in a strange metropolis with his mother and younger sister.

But fate prepared another cruel blow for the teenager. In 1919, his mother died of starvation. The 15-year-old teenager found himself in a very difficult position. He left school and went to Batumi, from where six months later he sailed on a ship to America, where he hoped to find his father.

Vosdanig took an early interest in drawing and began to create paintings while still in Yerevan.

Upon arrival in the United States, the young man settled in Boston and entered the local art school. Early in his professional career, he was heavily influenced by the Impressionists. Later, Gorky switched to portrait subjects, and then became interested in abstract art.

Arshile moved to New York in 1924 and continued his studies at the National Academy of Arts. And after graduation, he got a job as a drawing teacher at a school. In his free time, Gorki enthusiastically engaged in self-education, often visited museums and art galleries, and admired European avant-garde art.

In 1931, the work of the young painter was first presented to the public at a solo exhibition in Philadelphia and received many enthusiastic reviews. One of his paintings was acquired by the famous socialite Abby Aldrich Rockefeller.

By the early 1940s, Arshile Gorky had become a very sought-after painter, received American citizenship

He developed an original style of art, which critics called “surreal expressionism.” In 1941, he married Agnes McGrueder, who gave birth to the master’s two daughters, Maro and Yalda. This marriage was unsuccessful, the couple often quarreled, and a few years after the wedding, the wife started a love affair with the Chilean artist Roberto Matta.

Problems in family life and nervous shocks experienced in childhood eventually became the cause of Gorka’s severe depression. And after 1946, a flurry of negative events hit the artist. First, the fire completely destroyed his country workshop, along with dozens of paintings and a huge library. Doctors then discovered he had colon cancer. A few months later, the artist was in a serious car accident and broke his arm, losing the opportunity to paint. And at the end of a series of troubles, the wife left the master, taking her beloved daughters with her.

The exhausted psyche could not withstand these monstrous trials, the painter decided to commit suicide. And on July 21, 1948, Arshile Gorky was found hanged in his barn, next to him the police found a farewell note. The remains of the 44-year-old artist were buried in the cemetery of the town of Sherman, where the great master spent the last years of his life alone.