Arshile Gorky Catalogue Raisonné
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Photo: Mitro Hood
D1459
(Composition II)
1946
Graphite pencil and crayon on laid paper
18 7/8 x 25 3/16 in. (47.9 x 64 cm)
Recto, in ink, center right: A Gorky / 46
Verso not inscribed
The Baltimore Museum of Art:
Nelson and Juanita Greif Gutman Collection, BMA 1967.20
Exhibitions
1969 College Park
J. Millard Tawes Fine Arts Center, University of Maryland Art Department and Art Gallery, College Park, The Drawings of Arshile Gorky, March 20–April 27, 1969. (Exhibition catalogue: Joyner 1969), no. 36 (Drawings, Sketches, Gouaches), p. 54; fig. 34, ill. in b/w, p. 45, as "Composition II".
1976 Chicago
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Drawings by Five Abstract Expressionist Painters: Willem de Kooning, Arshile Gorky, Philip Guston, Franz Kline, Jackson Pollock, January 10–February 29, 1976, as "Composition II".
1979–80 Baltimore / AFA
Baltimore Museum of Art and American Federation of Arts, New York (organizers), Master Drawings and Watercolors of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, 1979–80, no. 65, ill. in b/w, p. 145, as "Composition II". Traveled to: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, August 24–October 7, 1979; Des Moines Art Center, November 19, 1979–January 6, 1980; Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi, February 8–March 16, 1980; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, May 1–June 22, 1980; Denver Art Museum, July 12–August 24, 1980.
1981–82 New York
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Arshile Gorky 1904–1948: A Retrospective, April 24–July 19, 1981, no. 240, ill. in b/w, p. 246, as "Composition II". Traveled to: Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, September 12–November 6, 1981; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, December 3, 1981–February 28, 1982.
1990 Baltimore
Baltimore Museum of Art, The Baltimore Museum of Art Collects: Surrealist Drawings, February 27–April 29, 1990.
1995–96 Fort Worth / Buffalo
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo (organizers), Arshile Gorky: The Breakthrough Years, 1995–96, no. 36, ill. in color, p. 161, as "Composition II" (exhibited in Washington, D.C. only). Traveled to: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., May 7–September 17, 1995; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, October 13–December 31, 1995; Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas, January 13–March 17, 1996.
2003–04b New York
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective of Drawings, November 20, 2003–February 15, 2004, no. 129, ill. in color, p. 219; p. 245, as "Composition II". Traveled to: Menil Collection, Houston, March 5–May 9, 2004.
Literature
Schwabacher 1957
Schwabacher, Ethel. Arshile Gorky. Introduction by Meyer Schapiro. New York: The Macmillan Company for the Whitney Museum of American Art, 1957. Monograph, fig. 55, ill. in b/w, p. 123, as "Composition, II".
Reiff 1961
Reiff, Robert F. "A Stylistic Analysis of Arshile Gorky's Art from 1943–1948." Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, New York, 1961, fig. 80, ill. in b/w, p. 358, as "Composition II".
Baltimore Museum of Art 1968
Baltimore Museum of Art. "Accessions Report: September 1966 through December 1967." Baltimore Museum of Art News 30, nos. 1–2 (1968), nos. 1–2, p. 28, ill. in b/w, as "Composition II".
Anfam 2004
Anfam, David. "Arshile Gorky: New York and Houston." The Burlington Magazine (London) 146 (March 2004), discussed, p. 205, as "Composition II".
Beredjiklian 2007
Beredjiklian, Alexandre. Arshile Gorky: sept thèmes majeurs. Suresnes, France: Alphamédian & Johanet; Lisbon: Fondation Calouste Gulbenkian, 2007. Monograph, discussed, p. 58, as "Composition II".
Mattison 2009
Matttison, Robert S. Arshile Gorky: Works and Writings. Barcelona: Ediciones Polígrafica, 2009. Monograph, ill. in color, p. 120, as "Virginia-Summer".
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, p. 66; p. 139, as "Composition II".
Notes
Watermark / Stamp: [Unidentified]
Unidentified blindstamp, lower left

Verso, in pencil, lower right [not in artist's hand]: 67.20 [upside down]

The verso inscription information and marking are known from a photograph provided by the Baltimore Museum of Art.

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

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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