NOT SOLD (BIDDING OVER)
0.00USD+ applicable fees & taxes.
This item WAS NOT SOLD. Auction date was 2003 May 16 @ 11:00UTC-05:00 : EST/CDT
ARSHILE GORKY
(1904-1948)
COMPOSITION
oil on canvas
63/8 x 101/2 in. (16.2 x 26.7 cm)
painted ca. 1946
ESTIMATE: $90,000-120,000
PROVENANCE
World House Galleries, NEW YORK
Dr. and Mrs. J. Lofstrom
Donald Morris Gallery, BIRMINGHAM
Allan Stone Gallery, NEW YORK
EXHIBITED
MIAMI, Lowe Art Museum, RUSSIAN AVANT GARDE / AMERICAN ABSTRACT ARTISTS, March 9-April 24, 1982, no. 63
literature
J. Jordan and R. Goldwater, THE PAINTINGS OF ARSHILE GORKY: A CRITICAL CATALOGUE, NEW YORK, 1982, p. 520, no. 341 (illustrated)
During the 1940s, the fertility of nature and humanity became a constant theme in Gorky's work. Since the 1930s, Gorky's letters to his sister were filled with references to their father's garden in Khorkom, Armenia, and a
deep longing for the Armenian countryside. In a letter dated 22 April 1944 to his sister, Gorky writes: "I dream of it [Khorkom] always and it is as if some ancient Armenian spirit within me moves my hand to create so far from our homeland the shapes of nature we loved in the gardens, wheat fields, and orchards of our Andoian family in Khorkom" (K. Mooradian, "A Special Issue on Arshile Gorky," ARAT: A QUARTERLY 12, no. 4, Fall 1971, p. 32).
It is during these years that Arshile Gorky began to evolve a language of signs, symbols and forms that corresponded to the intricate complexities of his inner vision, and his longing for his Armenian heritage. While the poetic abstractions of Miro and Masson were his primary inspiration, Gorky nevertheless admired the literal dreamscape illusionism of Dali and Tanguy, and was intrigued and nourished by the Surrealist love of the dream, the unconscious and the erotic. In 1945, Gorky explained, "...art is a language that must be mastered before it can be conveyed" (K. Mooradian, ARARAT, 1978,
p. 34). Cubism represented the artistic language he had mastered and Surrealism provided Gorky the freedom to reinvent it. Composition, 1946, with its highly charged line and densely packed abstraction, presents the viewers with an imagined reality, a psychological landscape, full of intricate geometric forms and sensuous colors which is at once an amalgamation of numerous quotations from other artists, and yet so uniquely a powerful work by the hand of Gorky.
Auction Location:
United States
Previewing Details:
Saturday May 3, 2003 10am to 5pm, Sunday May 4, 2003 1Pm to 5pm, Monday May 5, 2003 10am to 5pm, Tuesday May 6, 2003 10am to 5pm, Wednesday May 7, 2003 10am to 5pm, Thursday May 8, 2003 10am to 5pm, Friday May 9, 2003 10am to 5pm, Saturday May 10, 2003 10am to 5pm, Sunday May 11, 2003 1pm to 5pm, Monday May 12, 2003 10am to 5pm, Tuesday May 13, 2003 10am to 5pm, Wednesday May 14, 2003 10am to 5pm, Thursday May 15, 2003 10am to 2pm
Additional Fees:
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