Arshile Gorky, Untitled (Composition), 1946
Black ink and crayon on paper; verso: black ink. Gift of Susan W. Paine in honor of Mark Kerwin, MFA CFO (1999–2022), for his 22 years of Dedication, Loyalty, and Expertise offered the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. © The Arshile Gorky Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS).
Arshile Gorky was a pivotal figure in the shift to abstraction that transformed 20th-century American art. Untitled (Composition) is a consummate example of how Gorky’s drawings from this seminal period of his career blur the boundaries of landscape (the bucolic area around his parents-in-laws’ house in Virginia), still life, and poetic fantasy. Oddly shaped and tumbling near-abstract biomorphic forms, rendered with dancing and exuberant black-ink lines, evoke the landscape and nature within it. The drawing is a gift of Susan Paine, an Honorary Trustee, longtime advocate, friend, and supporter of MFA Boston.
Black ink and crayon on paper; verso: black ink.
Gift of Susan W. Paine in honor of Mark Kerwin, MFA CFO (1999–2022), for his 22 years of Dedication, Loyalty, and Expertise offered the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. © The Arshile Gorky Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS).