Arshile Gorky Catalogue Raisonné
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Catalogue Entry

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Photo: © Courtesy the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
D1262
[Untitled]
1946
Graphite pencil and crayon on paper
19 1/8 x 25 1/8 in. (48.6 x 63.8 cm)
Recto, in pencil, lower right: A Gorky 46
Verso not inscribed
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
50th Anniversary Gift of Edith and Lloyd Goodrich in honor of Juliana Force (82.48)
Exhibitions
1970a New York
New School Art Center, New York, Museum Leaders Collect: Selections from the Private Collections of Ten New York Museum Directors and Curators, April 24–May 27, 1970, no. 17, ill. in b/w, as "Drawing".
1980d New York
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 50th Anniversary Gifts, June 3–August 31, 1980, as "Drawing".
1981b New York
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Decade of Transition: 1940–1950, April 30–July 12, 1981, as "Drawing".
1981e New York
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Drawing Acquisitions, 1978–1981, September 17–November 15, 1981, ill. in b/w, p. 37, as "Drawing".
1989b New York
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Art in Place: Fifteen Years of Acquisitions, July 7–October 29, 1989, as "Drawing".
1991c New York
Whitney Museum of American Art at Philip Morris, New York, Drawing Acquisitions, 1980–1991: Selections from the Permanent Collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, June 12–September 5, 1991, as "Drawing".
2003–04b New York
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective of Drawings, November 20, 2003–February 15, 2004, no. 109, ill. in color, p. 189; p. 244, as "Untitled". Traveled to: Menil Collection, Houston, March 5–May 9, 2004.
Literature
Bulletin of the Whitney Museum of American Art 1980b
"50th Anniversary Gifts." Bulletin of the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York) 2 (Fall 1980), discussed p. 61, as "Drawing".
Beredjiklian 2007
Beredjiklian, Alexandre. Arshile Gorky: sept thèmes majeurs. Suresnes, France: Alphamédian & Johanet; Lisbon: Fondation Calouste Gulbenkian, 2007. Monograph, discussed p. 71, as "Sans titre".
Notes

Verso, in pencil, lower right [not in artist's hand]: 82.48

The verso inscription information and marking are known from the records of the Arshile Gorky Foundation.

Commentary

The drawing was likely created at Crooked Run Farm during Gorky’s third and final summer there in 1946.1 In late July that year, the Gorky family, including daughters Maro (b. 1943) and Natasha (b. 1945), left New York for 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). Notwithstanding the destruction, by fire, of the barn which Gorky had repurposed as a temporary studio on the property, as well as his ongoing recovery from a colostomy operation in March, the extended summer of 1946—from mid-July to early November—proved his most productive spell yet. As the artist reported to his younger sister Vartoosh (m. Mooradian; 1906–1991), shortly before the family’s return to New York from Virginia: “this summer I finished a lot of drawings, 292 of them. Never have I been able to do so much work, and they are good too.”2

The first owner of the drawing was the American painter Ethel Kremer Schwabacher (1903–1984) who met Gorky in New York in 1928. Between January 1934 and 1935, their friendship deepened as she and fellow patron Mina Boehm Metzger (1877–1975) shared private lessons with the artist, meeting at his 36 Union Square studio three afternoons a week for three hours. Ethel and her husband, Wolfgang Schwabacher (m. 1935; 1898–1951), remained devoted patrons of Gorky's work throughout their lives. In 1957, Ethel published the first monograph on Gorky (Schwabacher 1957). 

1. The family also visited for extended summer stays in 1943 and 1944.

2. Letter from Arshile Gorky to Vartoosh Mooradian, November 17, 1946, Arshile Gorky/Mooradian Archive, Eastern Diocese of the Armenian Church of America, New York; Arshile Gorky to Vartoosh Mooradian, November 17, 1946, 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), 406.

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