Arshile Gorky
b. c. 1904; Khorkom, Armenia d. 1948; Sherman, CT
The Artist and His Mother, 1926–c. 1936
Oil on canvas
Arshile Gorky based this portrait of himself and his mother on a photograph taken in his native Armenia when he was a child. In 1919 his mother died after years of deprivation during the Ottoman Empire's genocide of the Armenian population. The following year Gorky immigrated to the United States as a refugee. He became preoccupied with the photograph as he established his career as an artist, working on this painting over a span of ten years. The broad areas of color and dry brushwork create a soft, blurred effect that evokes loss and tender memories and foreshadows his later, more abstract paintings.
