Mojave

© The Arshile Gorky Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
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Mojave

United States, 1941-1942
Paintings
Oil on canvas
37 × 49 × 2 in. (93.98 × 124.46 × 5.08 cm)
Gift of Burt Kleiner (M.64.61)
Modern Art
Not currently on public view

Label

Arshile Gorky’s engagement with European modernism brought him into contact with several Surrealists living in exile or exhibiting in the United States, including Wifredo Lam, André Masson, Roberto Ma...
Arshile Gorky’s engagement with European modernism brought him into contact with several Surrealists living in exile or exhibiting in the United States, including Wifredo Lam, André Masson, Roberto Matta, and Yves Tanguy, whose art and ideas had an impact on his own work. Gorky’s paintings would create a crucial link between European Surrealism and American Abstract Expressionism. Though his visual vocabulary was primarily abstract, his paintings often reference personal events. The title of this work alludes to a road trip through the Mojave Desert that Gorky took during the summer of 1941 with his partner Agnes Magruder and sculptor Isamu Noguchi.

Wall label, 2021.
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Bibliography

  • Tuchman, Maurice, editor. New York School, The First Generation: Paintings of the 1940s and 1950s. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1965.

    View this publication in LACMA's Reading Room

  • Powell III, Earl A., Robert Winter, and Stephanie Barron. The Robert O. Anderson Building. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1986.

  • Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, and Yomiuri Shimbun, eds. Founders and Heirs of the New York School.  Japan: Yomiuri Shinbunsha, 1997.

  • Gale, Matthew. Arshile Gorky: enigma and nostalgia. London: Tate Publishing, 2010.
  • Eliel, Carol. John Altoon. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art and DelMonico Books/Prestel, 2014.
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