calendario eventi  :: 

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5/6/2010

Arshile Gorky

Museum of Contemporary Art - MOCA, Los Angeles

curated by Michael Taylor

Arshile Gorky (b. c.1902, Khorkom, Armenia; d. 1948 Sherman, Conn.) was a seminal figure in the movement toward abstraction that transformed American art in the middle of the 20th century. Born in an Armenian village on the eastern border of Ottoman Turkey, Gorky was a first-hand witness to the Turkish government's Armenian Genocide of 1915, which led the artist’s family and thousands of others to flee.

In 1920, Gorky emigrated to the United States and eventually settled in New York, where he became a largely self-taught artist. At a time when the American avant-garde privileged originality over traditional working methods, Gorky was a nonconformist who developed his personal vocabulary through a series of intensive apprenticeships to the styles of other artists, including Paul Cezanne, Pablo Picasso, Fernand Leger, and Joan Miro, before developing his own unique and deeply influential visual language in the early 1940s.

Gorky’s prominence in the New York art scene led him to befriend Andre Breton and Roberto Matta—fellow emigres and key figures in the surrealist group—who came to have an enormous impact on Gorky’s mature style. Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective positions Gorky as a crucial founder of abstract expressionism, but also as a passionate and dedicated artist whose tragic life often informed his groundbreaking and deeply personal paintings.

The first full-scale survey of Gorky’s work since 1981, this timely exhibition features Gorky’s most significant paintings, sculptures, and works on paper, including two masterworks from MOCA’s permanent collection—Study for The Liver is the Cock's Comb (1943) and Betrothal I (1947). Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective is organized by Michael Taylor, the Muriel and Philip Berman Curator of Modern Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where the exhibition was on view October 21, 2009, through January 10, 2010, before traveling to Tate Modern, London, February 10 through May 3, 2010. MOCA’s presentation, the third on the exhibition’s tour, is organized by MOCA Chief Curator Paul Schimmel. Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue that includes new essays by Harry Cooper, Jody Patterson, Robert Storr, and Kim Theriault

Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective is organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art in association with Tate Modern, London, and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

The international tour is made possible by the Terra Foundation for American Art. The U.S. tour is supported by The Lincy Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, and by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.

The exhibition at MOCA is presented by The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation. Generous support is provided by Lenore S. and Bernard A. Greenberg, Steve Martin, The MOCA Contemporaries, and the Pasadena Art Alliance. Additional support is provided by the MOCA Friends of Arshile Gorky: Kip and Mary Ann Hagopian in honor of Charles E. Young, Mrs. Joseph H. Stein, Jr., and Mrs. Louise Danelian.

In-kind media support is provided by Ovation, Asbarez Daily Newspaper/Horizon Armenian TV, YEREVAN Magazine, and Los Angeles magazine.

Event: Sunday Studio 08.01.10
MOCA Art Talk: Curator-led Exhibition Walkthrough 07.08.10
MOCA Art Talk: Arshile Gorky and Abstract Expressionism: A Contested History 06.06.10

Image: Arshile Gorky, Betrothal I, 1947
Oil on paper 51 x 40 in. The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles The Rita and Taft Schreiber Collection Given in loving memory of her husband, Taft Schreiber, by Rita Schreiber

Opening 6 June 2010

MOCA
250 South Grand Avenue - Los Angeles
Hours: Mon 11am–5pm, Thur 11am–8pm
Fri 11am–5pm, Sat, Sun 11am–6pm

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