Catalogue Entry
Verso not seen
When the drawing was exhibited in 1972, it was described as "from [a] sketchbook," which is unidentified.
Commentary
After living in Paris during the late 1920s, Julien Levy (1906–1981) returned to his birthplace of New York, opening a small gallery in 1931 at 602 Madison Avenue, where he specialized in Surrealist art and photography. Gorky came to the gallery frequently in the hopes of obtaining a show, offering examples of his work to Levy, such as this drawing, which the dealer purchased.1 Although Levy acquired several works and lent Gorky money, he did not offer him a contract at the time, finding his work too derivative.2 When first showing Levy a sample portfolio in the winter of 1932, Gorky reportedly exclaimed, “I was with Cézanne for a long time, and now naturally I am with Picasso. . . .” Levy, in turn, responded that he would show his work, "someday, when you are with Gorky. . . ."3 Gorky was offered a formal contract with Levy's gallery in December 1944. His debut solo show opened in March 1945.4
For over a decade—between c. 1927 and 1942—Gorky studied and emulated the lessons of Pablo Picasso’s (1881–1973) oeuvre: his early twentieth-century explorations into Primitive art; complex arrangements of Cubism; simplified still lifes of the early 1920s; neoclassical turn of the interwar period; and biomorphic forms that began in the later 1920s and continued into the following decade. Though Picasso's influence is clear in a number of works, such as this one, Gorky almost never directly copied a painting by the artist.
1. Julien Levy Gallery Records, 1932 Ledger, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Library and Archives.
2. Julien Levy, "Foreword," in Arshile Gorky: Paintings, Drawings, Studies, exh. cat. (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1962), 7.
3. Ibid.
4. Julien Levy Gallery, New York, Arshile Gorky, March 6–31, 1945. The drawings that appeared in the exhibition have not been conclusively identified as any of the artworks within the current installment of the catalogue raisonné.
