Arshile Gorky Catalogue Raisonné
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Catalogue Entry

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Photo: Peter Schälchli
D1092
(Untitled)
c. 1944–45
Graphite pencil and crayon on paper
17 1/8 x 23 5/8 in. (43.5 x 60 cm)
Recto, in pencil, lower right: A. Gorky
Verso not seen
Private collection
Exhibitions
1955c New York
Sidney Janis Gallery, New York, Drawings for Principal Paintings by Gorky, September 26–October 22, 1955.
1959b New York
Sidney Janis Gallery, New York, Late Drawings by Gorky, September 28–October 24, 1959. (Exhibition catalogue: Sidney Janis Gallery 1959), no. 6, ill. in b/w, as "Drawing," dated 1944–45.
1960c Minneapolis
University Gallery, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Gorky Drawings, October 27–December 2, 1960, as "Drawing".
1962–63b New York
Museum of Modern Art, New York, Arshile Gorky, 1904–1948, December 19, 1962–February 12, 1963. (Exhibition catalogue: Seitz 1962), no. 71, p. 54, as "Drawing," dated 1944–45. Traveled to: Washington Gallery of Modern Art, D.C., March 12–April 14, 1963.
1965 AC–London
Arts Council of Great Britain, London (organizer), Tate Gallery, Arshile Gorky: Paintings and Drawings, April 2–May 2, 1965, no. 63, as "Drawing," dated 1944–45.
1969e New York
M. Knoedler & Co. Inc, New York, Gorky: Drawings, November 25–December 27, 1969. (Exhibition catalogue: Jordan 1969), no. 87, ill. in b/w, p. 40; p. 59, as "Landscape," dated 1944–45.
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. 66, ill. in color, p. 136; p. 198, as "Untitled". 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. 34, ill. in color, p. 105, as "Untitled," dated 1944–45. 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.
2017 New York
Hauser & Wirth, New York, Ardent Nature: Arshile Gorky Landscapes, 1943–47, November 2–December 23, 2017. (Exhibition catalogue: Spender and Devaney 2017), ill. in color, pp. 52–53; p. 138, as "Untitled".
Literature
Osborn 1963
Osborn, Margaret. "The Mystery of Arshile Gorky: A Personal Account." Artnews (New York) 61, no. 10 (February 1963), ill. in b/w, p. 43, as "Drawing".
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 The Gorky family returned for another extended summer stay in 1946.

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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