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These beautiful images of The Betrothal, a series of paintings that some consider to be Gorky’s Guernica
Profile | Arshile Gorky
April 15, 1904 - July 21, 1948
ProfileFew artists have been able to transcend ethnocultural borders and earn worldwide name recognition: Arshile Gorky is among them. A key founder of abstract expressionist art, Gorky (born Vosdanig Manoug Adoyan) was a prolific painter whose tragic personal life influenced and elevated his art to uncharted heights. A survivor of the Armenian Genocide, he sought safety and peace in the United States, achieving the former but not the latter, tragically taking his own life at the height of his prowess. As contemporary British art critic William Feaver stated, Gorky’s death left the field open for his now more-famous rival, Jackson Pollock. Despite his early departure, Gorky’s artistic legacy lives on today, with many of his paintings and drawings hanging in the world’s most prestigious museums and galleries
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The Betrothal (c. 1947; Yale University Art Gallery)
This series was painted just a year before Gorky’s death. Devastating depictions of marriage combine abstraction with the erotic, melding the psychotic with symbolism. No doubt the unraveling of his marriage in his final years played a role in the images Gorky created.
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The Betrothal I (c. 1947; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles)
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The Betrothal II (c. 1947; The Whitney Museum of American Art)
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This conversation between Gorky’s wife and his granddaughter about Gorky
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This heart wrenching imagining and recreation of Gorky’s process of creating his most famous painting, The Artist and His Mother
"I met a lot of artists — but then I met Gorky... He had an extraordinary gift for hitting the nail on the head; remarkable. So I immediately attached myself to him and we became very good friends. It was nice to be foreigners meeting in some new place.
- Willem De Kooning
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