Arshile Gorky Catalogue Raisonné
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Photo: Peter Schälchli
D1028
(Virginia Landscape)
c. 1944
Crayon and graphite pencil on paper
18 1/2 x 23 5/8 in. (47 x 60 cm)
Recto not inscribed
Verso not seen
Private collection
Exhibitions
1975–77 AC–London
Arts Council of Great Britain, London (organizer), Arshile Gorky: Paintings and Drawings, 1975–77, no. 22, as "Landscape," dated 1943. Traveled to: Southampton Art Gallery, United Kingdom, December 12, 1975–February 22, 1976; Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield, United Kingdom, April 3–May 2, 1976; Sunderland Art Gallery, United Kingdom, June 5–August 15, 1976; City Art Gallery, Dundee, United Kingdom, August 21–November 27, 1976; Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, United Kingdom, December 19, 1976–January 16, 1977; Serpentine Gallery, London, March 12–April 11, 1977.
1986–87 Newport Beach
Newport Harbor Art Museum, Newport Beach, California, The Interpretive Link: Abstract Surrealism into Abstract Expressionism: Works on Paper, 1938–1948, July 16–September 14, 1986, no. 17, ill. in color, p. 75; ill. in color on cover and back cover, as "Virginia Landscape". Traveled to: Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, November 13, 1986–January 21, 1987; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, February 21–April 19, 1987.
1990–92 Lausanne
Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne, Switzerland, Arshile Gorky: Œuvres sur Papier, 1929–1947; Arbeiten auf Papier, 1929–1947, September 21–November 11, 1990, no. 60, ill. in color, p. 130; p. 197, as "Paysage de Virginie / Landschaft in Virginia". Traveled to: Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna, January 16–February 27, 1991; Musée Cantini, Marseille, France, March 15–May 30, 1991; Musée d'art Moderne de Saint Étienne, France, June 20–September 2, 1991; Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt, September 25–November 10, 1991; Kunsthalle Bremen, Germany, November 19, 1991–January 26, 1992.
1992–93 Venice
Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, Italy, Arshile Gorky: Works on Paper / Opere su Carta, April–June 28, 1992, no. 32, ill. in color, p. 101, as "Landscape in Virginia / Paesaggio della Virginia". Traveled to: Palazzo delle Esponsizioni, Rome, October 14–November 30, 1992; Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Centro de Arte Moderna José Azeredo Perdigão, Lisbon, July 21–August 27, 1993.
1997 Conegliano
Galleria Comunale d'Arte, Palazzo Sarcinelli, Conegliano, Italy, Da Monet a Morandi: paesaggi dello spirito, April 13–June 15, 1997, ill. in color, p. 103, as "Paesaggio della Virginia".
2003–04b New York
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective of Drawings, November 20, 2003–February 15, 2004, no. 81, ill. in color, p. 151; p. 244, as "Landscape in Virginia". Traveled to: Menil Collection, Houston, March 5–May 9, 2004.
2019 Venice
Ca'Pesaro International Gallery of Modern Art, Venice, Italy, Arshile Gorky: 1904–1948, May 8–September 22, 2019, ill. in color, p. 171, as "Virginia Landscape".
Literature
Spender and Devaney 2017
Spender, Saskia and Edith Devaney. Ardent Nature: Arshile Gorky Landscapes, 1943–47. Zurich: Hauser & Wirth Publishers, 2017. Exhibition catalogue (2017 New York), ill. in color, pp. 42–43; p. 138, as "Virginia Landscape".
Notes

Commentary

The drawing was likely created at Crooked Run Farm during Gorky’s second summer there in 1944. In early May that year, the Gorky family left New York and returned to Crooked Run—the rural Lincoln, Virginia, home of Agnes "Mougouch" Gorky's (1921–2013) parents Esther (1896–1990) and John H. Magruder II (1889–1963)—this time staying for close to six months. It proved another creatively productive period for Gorky, who wrote to his younger sister, “I have drawn many new drawings which are among my best.”1 He was again captivated by his surroundings: the tall grasses, thistles, milkweed, and ragweed; reportedly lamenting, when the fields were mown, “they are cutting down the Raphaels.”2 The barn on the property, which Gorky temporarily repurposed as a studio, was populated with a collection of dried horse bones, “old rusty farm implements,” “bits of machinery,” and haystacks.3

1. Letter from Arshile Gorky to Vartoosh Mooradian, c. 1944, Arshile Gorky/Mooradian Archive, Eastern Diocese of the Armenian Church of America, New York; Arshile Gorky to Vartoosh Mooradian, c. 1944, in Matthew Spender, ed., Arshile Gorky: The Plow and the Song: A Life in Letters and Documents, trans. Father Krikor Maksoudian (Zurich: Hauser & Wirth Publishers, 2018), 307.

2. Arshile Gorky, as quoted in letter from Mougouch Gorky to Jeanne Reynal, Summer 1944, in Spender, ed., The Plow and the Song, 309.

3. Letter from Mougouch Gorky to Jeanne Reynal, November 1944, in ibid, 319-20.

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