Arshile Gorky
Golden Brown Painting
1943–44
As a young man Arshile Gorky fled the Armenian genocide in Ottoman Turkey and settled in the United States in 1920, becoming a progenitor of the American Abstract Expressionist movement. During the 1940s the artist Roberto Matta, also an exile, encouraged Gorky to experiment with the Surrealist practice of tapping unconscious associations as part of the artistic process. Gorky painted and drew abstract shapes that resembled aspects of his memories, dreams, and experiences, as in this painting, in which fluid forms clustered along the horizon suggest plants, water, and rock formations. Gorky likely based this composition on the landscape around an abandoned silica mill on the Housatonic River in Connecticut, which he and his wife visited in the summer of 1942. With its thin washes of diluted oil paint used to create transparent veils of color, this work also references the mid-1920s paintings of the Spanish Surrealist artist Joan Miró. [Permanent collection label, 2019]
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Artist
Arshile Gorky
(American, b. Ottoman Empire (Turkey), c. 1904–1948)
- Title Golden Brown Painting
- Date 1943–44
- Medium Oil on canvas
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Dimensions
unframed | 43 13/16 x 55 9/16 in.
- Credit line University purchase, Bixby Fund, 1953
- Object number WU 3841
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Technique
oil painting
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Work type
painting
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Theme
Exile, Migration, and Displacement
Frederick Hartt and American Abstraction in the 1950s: Building the Collection at Washington University in St. Louis
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 05/04/2012 - 08/27/2012
Gesture, Scrape, Combine, Calculate: Postwar Abstraction from the Permanent Collection
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 08/20/2010 - 09/20/2010
Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective
Philadelphia Museum of Art, 10/30/2009 - 01/10/2010
Art in America: 300 Years of Innovation
Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art (Shanghai, China), 04/30/2007 - 06/30/2007
Pushkin Museum of Fine Art (Moscow, Russia), 07/23/2007 - 09/09/2007
National Art Museum of China (Beijing, China), 02/10/2007 - 04/05/2007
Picasso to Pollock: H.W. Janson and the Legacy of Modern Art at Washington University in St. Louis
Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum (San Antonio, Texas), 08/17/2004 - 10/24/2004
H. W. Janson and the Legacy of Modern Art at Washington University in St. Louis
Salander-O’Reilly Galleries (New York, New York), 03/12/2002 - 04/06/2002
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 08/30/2002 - 12/08/2002
Caught By Politics: Art of the 1930s and 1940s
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 01/19/2001 - 03/18/2001
International Abstraction: Art of the 1950s from the Washington University Collections
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 01/22/1999 - 03/28/1999
Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 01/12/1998 - 04/05/1998
Abstract Expressionism: American Art in the 1950s and 1960s
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 01/17/1997 - 04/06/1997
Arshile Gorky: The Breakthrough Years
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, 01/13/1996 - 03/17/1996
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, 10/13/1995 - 12/31/1995
National Gallery of Art, 05/07/1995 - 09/17/1995
A Gallery of Modern Art
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 08/09/1994 - 10/16/1994
Arshile Gorky: A Ninetieth Birthday Commemoration
Gagosian Gallery (New York, New York), 01/11/1994 - 03/05/1994
Capsule of Modern Art
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 01/09/1983 - 03/06/1983
Modernism at Midstream: From Europe to America and Back Again
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 09/04/1983 - 11/06/1983
Cubists, Surrealists, and Expressionists
American Masters of the Twentieth Century
Oklahoma City Museum of Art, 05/07/1982 - 06/20/1982
The Centennial Exhibition
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 05/15/1981 - 10/11/1981
Gorky Retrospective
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 11/08/1967 - 12/10/1967
Washington University Collection of Modern Paintings and Sculpture from Daumier to Pollock
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 04/06/1966 - 05/08/1966
Drawings by Arshile Gorky
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 10/04/1963 - 10/25/1963
Drawings, Studies, and Paintings by Arshile Gorky,
Arts Club of Chicago, 11/08/1963 - 12/14/1963
Arshile Gorky: Paintings, Drawings, Studies
Arshile Gorky [Paintings, Drawings, Studies],
Washington Gallery of Modern Art, 03/12/1963 - 04/14/1963
Museum of Modern Art, New York, 12/19/1962 - 02/12/1963
Opening Exhibition of Mark C. Steinberg Memorial Hall
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 04/29/1960
Arshile Gorky in the Final Years
Sidney Janis Gallery (New York, New York), 02/16/1953 - 03/14/1953
Art at Washington University
Saint Louis Art Museum, 05/07/1953 - 05/31/1953
American Vanguard Art for Paris
Regards sur la Peinture Americaine,
Galerie de France, 02/26/1952 - 03/15/1952
Sidney Janis Gallery, 12/26/1951 - 01/05/1952
Arshile Gorky Memorial Exhibition
Whitney Museum of American Art, 01/05/1951 - 02/18/1951
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 05/09/1951 - 07/09/1951
Walker Art Center, 03/04/1951 - 04/22/1951
University Collections [American Federation of Arts/College Art Association European traveling exhibition]
Venue Unknown (Besançon, France)
Venue Unknown (Tübingen, Germany)
Venue Unknown (Marburg, Germany)
Venue Unknown (Lyon, France)
Venue Unknown (Liège, Belgium), 1957
Venue Unknown (Brussels, Belgium)
Venue Unknown (Newcastle, England)
Venue Unknown (London, England)
Venue Unknown (Birmingham, England)
Venue Unknown (Utrecht, Netherlands)
Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College (Oberlin, Ohio)
Venue Unknown (Malmö, Sweden)
1953
Sidney Janis Gallery, New York
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