Arshile Gorky Catalogue Raisonné
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Catalogue Entry

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Photo: José Manuel Costa Alves
P112
(Portrait of Vartoosh)
c. 1935–37
Oil on canvas
11 x 15 5/16 in. (27.9 x 38.9 cm)
Front not inscribed
Reverse not seen
Diocese of the Armenian Church of America (Eastern) on Deposit at the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon
Exhibitions
1984–85 Lisbon
Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Centro de Arte Moderna José Azeredo Perdigão, Lisbon, Arshile Gorky: Collection Mooradian, October 24–November 25, 1984, no. 4, ill. in color, p. 92, as "Portrait of Vartoosh," dated 1933. Traveled to: Centre Culturel Portugais, Paris, January 17–March 9, 1985.
2002d New York
Gagosian Gallery, New York, Arshile Gorky: Portraits, March 20–April 27, 2002. (Exhibition catalogue: Gagosian Gallery 2002), ill. in color, p. 62, as "Portrait of Vartoosh," dated c. 1933–34.
2014–15 Lisbon
Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Centro de Arte Moderna José Azeredo Perdigão, Lisbon, Arshile Gorky e a Coleção, June 4, 2014–May 31, 2015, as "Portrait of Vartoosh / Retrato de Vartoosh".
2019 Venice
Ca'Pesaro International Gallery of Modern Art, Venice, Italy, Arshile Gorky: 1904–1948, May 8–September 22, 2019, ill. in color, p. 85, as "Portrait of Vartoosh," dated 1933.
Literature
Mooradian 1980
Mooradian, Karlen. The Many Worlds of Arshile Gorky. Chicago: Gilgamesh Press, 1980. Monograph, fig. 21, ill. in b/w (detail), p. 76, as "Portrait of Vartoosh".
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 p. 51, as "Portrait of Vartoosh".
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. 112, ill. in b/w, pp. 240–41, as "Portrait of Vartoosh".
Herrera 2002
Herrera, Hayden. "Gorky's Distant Likenesses." Art in America (New York) 90 (November 2002), ill. in color, p. 150, as "Portrait of Vartoosh".
Thil 2014
Thil, Marie-Anne. "Arshile Gorky: entre le surrélisme et l'art abstrait." France Arménie (October 2014), ill. in color, p. 68, as "Portrait of Vartoosh".
Spender 2018a
Spender, Matthew, ed. Arshile Gorky: The Plow and the Song: A Life in Letters and Documents. Zurich: Hauser & Wirth Publishers, 2018, ill. in color, p. 155, as "Portrait of Vartoosh".
Notes
On loan: Art Institute of Chicago, March 12, 1964–September 19, 1984.

Commentary

The painting is a portrait of Gorky’s younger sister Vartoosh Mooradian (née Adoian; 1906–1991). For a period of four years and eight months—between June 1915, when forcibly displaced by the Armenian genocide, and February 26, 1920, when Gorky and Vartoosh arrived at Ellis Island aboard the S.S. Presidente Wilson, an Italian ship—the two siblings emigrated together to the United States stopping at ports including Batumi, Georgia; Constantinople (present-day Istanbul); Athens; Patras, Greece; and Naples.

For just over a year beginning in September 1935, Vartoosh, her husband Moorad (1896–1963), and their young son Karlen (1935–1990), lived with Gorky in his studio at 36 Union Square in New York. During their stay Gorky made a pencil drawing of Vartoosh. In a letter to his sister from late 1937, by which point the Mooradians had moved to Chicago, Gorky states that "from that [drawing] I have made four very magnificent oil paintings," of which this is one (see also P111 and P113; the fourth is unidentified).1 As Gorky never succeeded in delivering these paintings to Vartoosh, the oil portrait was given to her by the Estate of Arshile Gorky after the artist's death.

Although the title is identified as lifetime in Jim M. Jordan's catalogue raisonné, there is no known extant documentation confirming its origin with the artist and we have therefore designated it as posthumous.2

1. Letter from Arshile Gorky to Vartoosh Mooradian, [September or December] 18, 1937, Arshile Gorky/Mooradian Archive, Eastern Diocese of the Armenian Church of America, New York. Arshile Gorky to Vartoosh Mooradian, [Month unknown] 18, 1937, 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), 154, 156.

2. Jim M. Jordan, "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), 241.

Portraits (sitter identified): Vartoosh Adoian Mooradian (artist's sister)

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