- Artist or Maker
- Arshile Gorky
Armenia, active United States, 1904-1948 - Title
- Mojave
- Date Made
- 1941-1942
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 37 × 49 × 2 in. (93.98 × 124.46 × 5.08 cm)
- Accession Number
- M.64.61
- Collecting Area
- Modern Art
- Curatorial Notes
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.
- Selected Bibliography
- Eliel, Carol. John Altoon. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art and DelMonico Books/Prestel, 2014.
Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, and Yomiuri Shimbun, eds. Founders and Heirs of the New York School. Japan: Yomiuri Shinbunsha, 1997.
