Golden Brown Painting

Arshile Gorky

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]

Artist Arshile Gorky (American, b. Ottoman Empire (Turkey), c. 1904–1948)
Title Golden Brown Painting
Date 1943–44
Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions unframed | 43 13/16 x 55 9/16 in.
Credit line University purchase, Bixby Fund, 1953
Object number WU 3841

Technique oil painting
Work type painting
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)

Frederick Hartt and American Abstraction in the 1950s: Building the Collection at Washington University in St. Louis 2012

H. W. Janson and the Legacy of Modern Art 2002

1953
Sidney Janis Gallery, New York

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