Artist’s Ephemera

The artist’s ephemera consists of the clippings and reproductions in Arshile Gorky’s studio at the time of his death. Much of the ephemera includes inscriptions by the artist, sketches by the artist, and/or markings in other hands, all of which is noted with the ephemera on which it appears.

It is well known that Gorky, an autodidact, was a lifelong admirer and scrutinizer of artworks by other artists. Many of his contemporaries would separately remark upon the “faded illustrations tacked on his [studio] walls” at 36 Union Square. Gorky’s dealer Julien Levy particularly remembered the artist’s “passionate discourses concerning” the “monochrome reproductions of Mantegna and Piero della Francesca and photographs of Ingres drawings” in his possession.

Excepting the artist's clippings from the New York tabloid PM Daily, dated November 19, 1941 (see D0861, D0862, and D0863), Gorky's entire collection of reproductions and clippings, as was intact at the time of his death, is catalogued here. The full breadth of his collection of ephemera, however, is not represented here, as absent are those items that were variously gifted, destroyed, and/or simply lost, both during his lifetime and posthumously.