Notes on Arshile Gorky

If ever I’m feeling low, I console myself by reading the biography of artist Arshile Gorky, pioneer of Abstract Expressionism and a man with a string of very bad luck. As a young man he escaped the Armenian Genocide in 1915; his mother died of starvation in 1919. But it was in 1946 that things started going downhill. In January that year his studio burnt down, destroying most of his work. A month later he was diagnosed with colon cancer. Then Gorky found out his wife, Agnes, was having an affair with a friend of his. The marriage broke up and Agnes moved away with their children. Gorky was then in a car accident. He decided enough was enough and hung himself on July 21, 1948.