Arshile Gorky (1904–1948)

 Arshile Gorky was born Vos- danig Manoog Adoian in Khorkom. Armenia, to Sedrag Adoian and Shushanik der Marderosian. He attended local schools. In 1915 he fled the Turkish genocide of Armenians, finally immigrating to America in 1920.In 1925 Gorky moved to New York City and changed his name to honor the Russian writer Maxim Gorky, to whom he often pretended to be related. Arshile is the Armenian form of Achilles. He studied at the National Academy of Design and the Grand Central School of Art, where he taught 1926 to early 1940 s.

Enigmatic Combat

Arshile Gorky has long been recognized as an important figure in 20th Century American art. After a long period of voluntary apprenticeship to such modern masters as Cezanne, Picasso, Miro, Kandinsky and others, Gorky reached his artistic reached his artistic maturity only in the early 1940s (he died in 1948 at the age of 44) when he blossomed as a highly original and imaginative artist, and created a body of work noted for its exquisite and haunting beauty.its exquisite and haunting beauty. At the same time, his understanding of European modernism enabled him to play a crucial role in the development of the new American painting which came into international prominence during the 1950s.

Sources
Orange Coast Magazine Feb 1982
Encyclopedia of New Jersey edited by Maxine Lurie