Arshile Gorky Catalogue Raisonné

Catalogue Entry

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Verso

D1639

[Head, Three-quarter View]

c. 1936

Graphite pencil on paper

12 x 8 3/4 in. (30.5 x 22.2 cm)

See literature record Gorky, n.d., for transcription of recto and verso inscriptions

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Francis Mulhall Achilles Library, Archives, "Arshile Gorky Research Collection: Ethel Schwabacher Papers"

Provenance

Estate of Arshile Gorky (1948)

Ethel Kremer Schwabacher, New York, by gift (by 1957)

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Francis Mulhall Achilles Library, Archives, "Arshile Gorky Research Collection: Ethel Schwabacher Papers," by donation

Notes

Creases in the sheet indicate that the drawing had been folded in thirds. The torn right edge indicates that it was removed from a hole-punched, wire-bound sketchbook, which is unidentified. The sketchbook also included D1640.

Commentary

The drawing is dated to c. 1936 in accordance with a letter that Gorky sent to his then-girlfriend, the American painter Corinne Michelle "Michael" West (1908–1991), in August 1936, in which he cites "The Period of Sleeping-Fits" by René Crevel (1900–1935)—the beginning of which is also quoted on the drawing's verso (see Gorky c. 1936a; see also D1640).¹

1. Gorky presumably encountered Crevel's text in the following periodical: René Crevel, "The Period of Sleeping-Fits," in This Quarter 5, no. 1 (September 1932): 181–188. Letter from Arshile Gorky to Corrine "Michael" West, August 24, 1936, in Matthew Spender, ed., Arshile Gorky The Plow and the Song: A Life in Letters and Documents (Zurich: Hauser & Wirth Publishers, 2018), 122–23.

Related Work

[Untitled]

c. 1936

Gouache on paper

D1640

Gouache on paper