1904 April 15th born Vostanik Manoog Adoyan
in Khorgom, situated on the shores of Lake Van in Armenia.
Armenian American Painter.
1910 Father emigrated to America to avoid the draft.
1920 February Gorky arrives Ellis Island with his sister Vartoosh via Russia;
his mother had died of starvation.
1922 Gorky enrolled in the New School of Design in Boston.
1925 - 1931 taught at the Grand Central School of Art.
He moved to New York and changed his name to Arshile Gorky; after the Russian
writer Maxim Gorky.
Teacher at the New School of Design in New York.
Mark Rothko studied under him.
Influenced by painters of the School of Paris, such as Henri Matisse,
Pablo Picasso, and Joan Miro.
1927 Met and influenced Ethel Kremer Schwabacher -> developing a lifelong friendship.
She became his first biographer.
1930 "Discovered" by Alfred Barr.
1935 he achieved more critical attention by appearing at the Whitney Museum of
American Art: Abstract Painting in America.
He joined the Artists' Union.
Mercedes Matter was his girlfriend.
Also an artist, she worked with Gorky and de Kooning ->
(later having an affair with him); on the WPA Federal Art Project.
1940's Affected by the work of European Surrealists, particularly Joan Miro,
and Andre Masson.
Around this time he met Roberto Matta.
1941 Sept 5th. m. Agnes Magruder.
1943 meets Andre Breton.
Garden in Sochi.
1944 The Liver is the Cock's Comb
Praised by Andre Breton as a "great gateway open to the analogical world".
1945 Influenced by Joan Miro's Constellation paintings, shown in New York
with catalogue introduction by Andre Breton.
1946 Jan. Gorky's studio, a converted barn on his wife's Connecticut property,
burned down.
Feb. diagnosed with colon cancer and underwent a colostomy, which left him
physically handicapped and emotionally scarred.
Show at Julien Levy Gallery.
1948 June 1st. the writer Malcolm Cowley and his wife, Yves Tanguy and
Kaye Tanguy, Peter Blume and his wife; Alexander Calder
with his wife Louisa were guests at Agnes' 27th birthday.
June 17th. Agnes and Robert Matta? run away for two days before she returns
to take Maro and Natasha to her parent's farm in Virginia.
June 26th. Julien Levy crashes his car while driving Arshile Gorky home.
Gorky had a broken collarbone and two fractured vertebrae in his neck and was
placed in traction. His painting arm was "semiparalyzed."
July 5th Returns home from hospital.
July 19th. Isamu Noguchi drove Gorky back to Sherman, accompanied by Wifredo Lam
and his wife Helena.
July 21st. Suicide from hanging; in Sherman, Connecticut.
See work -> and The last days ->.
See web -> and .
Bibliography
Black Angel: The Life of Arshile Gorky - Nouritza Matossian (2000)
Arshile Gorky - Hayden Herrera (2003)
See Timeline
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