ARSHILE GORKY

After a decade of working and a period of moderate critical success, Gorky initiated a series of studies and paintings observed from his rural environment while on holiday in Connecticut, which became a crucial intermediary step in the development of his individual style. His Waterfall series from 1942 exhibits a spontaneity and free use of paint that belies the complexity of its compositional rigour. The following year, Gorky temporarily relocated to Virginia where nature became his primary subject matter. His drawings from this period took on a new fervour, which he later translated into some of the most evocative paintings of his career, including the highly complex The Liver Is the Cock’s Comb (1944.)

Gorky’s later works serve as primal responses to nature, where the artist granted as much presence to the relationships between the objects he observed as the objects themselves. Frequently returning to idealised memories of his early life, Gorky incorporated fabricated elements from his childhood amongst the reality of his surroundings. His compositions seemingly implode upon themselves, culminating in a sense that the paintings are being created from the centre outwards. Gorky’s highly personal vision was crystallised in these late works where, in his unswerving belief that art comes from within, his ‘otherness’ empowered him to carve his own art form guided by memory and imagination.

Courtesy Hauser & Wirth