Exhibition "arshile Gorky: The Early Years"

[Siamanto]

EARLY GORKY WORKS & CATALOGUE BREAK NEW GROUND

 

"ARSHILE GORKY: THE EARLY YEARS" EXTENDED THROUGH FEB. 2005

 

Also on View: Jerome Witkin: Site & Insight Part 2

 

Jack Rutberg Fine Arts

357 North La Brea Avenue

Los Angeles, California 90036-2517

Tel (323) 938-5222

Fax (323) 938-0577

E-mail: jrutberg@jackrutbergfinearts.com

URL: www.jackrutbergfinearts.com

 

PRESS RELEASE

 

LOS ANGELES, CA - Arshile Gorky (1904-1948) is widely regarded as one of

the most pivotal and significant artists in the development of 20th

century American art. After moving to America from Armenia in 1920, he

quickly became a lightning rod for other artists in the late 1920s and

early 30s, sparking the genesis what was to become the "New York

School"and setting the course of modern art in America.

 

Now, in a ground-breaking exhibition entitled Arshile Gorky - The Early

Years, and with a 96-page catalogue of the same name, Jack Rutberg Fine

Arts in Los Angeles is showing 66 rare works by Gorky from a private

collection, most previously unexhibited. This exhibition is thought to

be the largest exhibit of Gorky's works ever presented outside of a

museum, and breaks new ground in addressing Gorky's earliest stylistic

development.

 

"Arshile Gorky -The Early Years" offers new references and insights into

this legendary artist during his seminal period as he explored the avant

garde sensibilities of the time. As Melvin P. Lader (widely regarded as

the eminent scholar on the work of Arshile Gorky and author of numerous

books on Gorky and abstract expressionism) notes in this exhibition

catalogue's text: "As a group, the drawings and paintings mirror Gorky's

stylistic evolution, up to the point in the late 1930s when he began to

truly digest and synthesize so many of his early influences on the verge

of finding his own unique language and style. Examples of his absorption

of Analytic Cubism, Synthetic Cubism, and aspects of Surrealism are

plentiful among these works . . . and they offer us the rare opportunity

to view a good number . . . from a very fertile period of his artistic

career."

 

As Donald Kuspit notes in his 1998 essay Arshile Gorky in the Thirties:

"Gorky began his `self-analysis' in the drawings and painting of the

thirties . . . already beginning to move beyond [modernist elders] ideas

. . .in the thirties still lifes [which are] surrealized and

abstractified versions of Cezanne's still lifes." Indeed, Kuspit says

"we see the beginning of this pure, autonomous, highly fluid,

unpredictable line . . . which begins in nature and ends in pure

expression - as abstract expression."

 

That this exhibition was even possible is due to the long-standing

friendship between Gorky and the Swiss-born American artist Hans

Burkhardt (1904-1994), who shared a studio with Gorky in New York for

many years, and acquired a formidable collection of Gorky's early works.

 

As Lader observes: "Among them were Gorky's small Cezannean landscape

Staten Island and an equally significant early Self Portrait, both of

which are key pieces in understanding Gorky's early absorption of modern

influences" and the "Burkhardt collection Gorky drawings provides a

rather unique opportunity to see the artist's art and ideas evolve

within an important period of his artistic transformation. Drawings, by

their very nature, register the artist's first impulses in creating a

work. As such, they can often be of enormous value in understanding how

an artist thinks and in tracing the various stages through which his art

has progressed."

 

"Arshile Gorky: The Early Years" is currently exhibited at Jack Rutberg

Fine Arts gallery, 357 North La Brea Avenue, Los Angeles, through

February, 2005.

The exhibition is accompanied by a 96-page text with 103 color

illustrations; essay by Dr. Lader, who co-curated the recent major

retrospective of Gorky drawings at the Whitney Museum of Art in New York

and the Menil Collection in Houston.

 

Gallery hours are Tuesday - Friday from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm and

Saturdays from 10:00 to 5:00 pm or by appointment.

 

A portfolio sampling of Arshile Gorky's exhibition may be viewed at the

gallery's Web site,

www.jackrutbergfinearts.com/JRutbergFile/JRutbergArtists/AGorky.html

 

http://groong.usc.edu/news/msg102029.html

[kakachik77]

back in the days I worked for this gallery, happy days....Rutberg was always a big fan of Gorky.

[Arvestaked]

I will go to this for sure. My cousin should go as well; he's been looking to buy.

[Arvestaked]

Just so people know, there are four paintings, one guache, and the remainder of the 60 something works are sketches that were not intended to be freestanding works of art in themselves. I still encourage people to go but don't expect a bunch of crazy paintings and drawings.