Picture Of the Week

This week's picture is by Arshile Gorky, an Armenian-American abstract impressionist. I first became aware of his art by watching a Atom Egoyan's wonderful film about memory and the victims of the Twentieth Century's first genocide, Ararat.

Gorky is a fascinating artist on a number of levels. He didn't live long, dying at the age of 44. And he was an autodidact, learning to paint by copying the work of others rather than through formal education. His rapid evolution as an artist reflects the major trends of both the American and the European art worlds through the first half of the Twentieth Century. And his work reflects both the physical pain of his numerous afflictions, and the psychic pain of the generation of Armenians who grew up seeking to preserve and cope with the memory of the atrocities that had been inflicted on their parents. This picture of the artist and his mother seem, in my mind, to sum up so much of what this immensely talented artist stood for.

To learn more about Gorky and his art visit this page at the ArtCyclopedia and follow the links.