Arshile Gorky Catalogue Raisonné

Catalogue Entry

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Photo: Peter Schälchli

: Inscription on the upper stretcher bar

P078

Composition No. 3

c. 1929–30

Oil on canvas

33 1/2 x 23 1/2 in. (85.1 x 59.7 cm)

Front not inscribed
Reverse, upper stretcher bar, center: ↑ TOP 1929. A. Gorky

Private collection

Provenance

The artist

[J.B. Neumann / New Art Circle, New York (1930)]

The artist (after March 1935)

Estate of Arshile Gorky (1948)

Private collection (1975)

[Hauser & Wirth (2020)]

Private collection (September 2021)

Exhibitions

1935a New York

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Abstract Painting in America, February 12–March 22, 1935, no. 48, as Composition No. 3, lent by J. B. Neumann, New York.

Literature

Jordan 1982a

Jordan, Jim M. "The Paintings of Arshile Gorky: New Discoveries, New Sources, and Chronology." In The Paintings of Arshile Gorky: A Critical Catalogue, by Jim M. Jordan and Robert Goldwater. New York and London: New York University Press, 1982, discussed pp. 35, 39, 43, as "Composition".

Jordan 1982b

Jordan, Jim M. "Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings." In The Paintings of Arshile Gorky: A Critical Catalogue, by Jim M. Jordan and Robert Goldwater. New York and London: New York University Press, 1982, no. 78, ill. in b/w, pp. 205–206, as "Composition".

Beredjiklian 2007

Beredjiklian, Alexandre. Arshile Gorky: sept thèmes majeurs. Suresnes, France: Alphamédian & Johanet; Lisbon: Fondation Calouste Gulbenkian, 2007. Monograph, discussed p. 24, as "Composition," dated 1929–31.

Eastham 2025

Eastham, Ben, ed. Arshile Gorky: New York City. Zurich: Hauser & Wirth Publishers, 2025. Monograph, discussed p. 32; ill. in color, p. 35, as Composition No. 3.

Notes

The inscription on the upper stretcher bar is known from a photograph provided by the owner.

Commentary

The painting's lifetime title, Composition No. 3, originates from its first public display at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, in 1935.¹

Gorky often backdated his paintings and also frequently reworked the same canvas over many years. Here, the date inscribed on the original upper stretcher bar, "1929," likely refers to the former scenario. It is also possible that Gorky reused an existing stretcher, which he is known to have done, especially as a cost-saving measure. Stylistically, it is more likely that the painting was completed c. 1929–30.

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. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Abstract Painting in America, February 12–March 22, 1935. Exhibition catalogue with text by Stuart Davis.

After works by other artists: Pablo Picasso

Related Work

(Untitled)

c. 1929–30

Ink and ink wash on paper

D0116

Ink and ink wash on paper