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Arshile Gorky Catalogue Raisonné

Catalogue Entry

D0216
[Drawing, Painting]
c. 1935
Gouache on paper
10 1/4 x 12 3/4 in. (26 x 32.4 cm)
Recto, in pencil, upper right: To My Dearest[,] Gorky / [paraph]
Verso not seen
Private collection
Provenance
The artist
Leonore Gallet, New York, gift of the artist (c. 1938–40)
Harold Diamond, New York (by 1964)
John and Kimiko Powers, New York (April 27, 1964)
Acquavella Galleries Inc., New York (2000)
Private collection (2000)
Exhibitions
2009–10 Philadelphia
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective, October 15, 2009–January 10, 2010. (Exhibition catalogue: Taylor 2009a), pl. 70, ill. in color, p. 226; p. 388, as "Untitled (Study for Painting)," dated 1936–37. Traveled to: Tate Modern, London, February 10–May 3, 2010 (Gale 2010); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, June 6–September 20, 2010 (Gale 2010).
Notes

Commentary

The overall composition is directly related to Gorky's oil on canvas Painting (P173), which he dated to 1936–37, and from which its title derives.

The gouache was a gift to Leonore Gallet (1911–2005), to whom it is likely inscribed. Gallet was a violinist with the New York Symphony Orchestra. From around February 1938 until early 1940, she studied with Gorky and the two were romantically involved.1 

1. In February 1938, Gorky inscribed a Valentine's Day card to Gallet (D1529). The last letter of Gorky's in which Gallet is mentioned dates to early 1940: Letter from Arshile Gorky to Vartoosh Mooradian, early 1940, Arshile Gorky/Mooradian Archive, Eastern Diocese of the Armenian Church of America, New York; Arshile Gorky to Vartoosh Mooradian, early 1940, 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), 190–91.

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