Study for Agony

A study for one of Arshile Gorky’s most celebrated paintings (now in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York), Study for Agony belongs to the final and most accomplished phase of the artist’s career. Previously, many of his oil paintings were produced from single master preparatory drawings, which he made using hard leaded and extremely sharp pencils. However, Study for Agony is part of a singular feverish series that shows a more spontaneous, expressionistic investigation, visible through his use of softer lead, brasher marks and primary colours. This transformation may be considered in tandem with the traumatic events of his final years of his life.

This style breakthrough, defined by his friend and dealer Julien Levy as his ultimate “Eye-Spring” (J. Levy, “Foreword,” Arshile Gorky: paintings, drawings, studies, New York, 1962, p. 9), is indebted to the Surrealist practice of automatism, which made him understand that his continual drawing was as a creative psychological space rather than a process of mere apprenticeship. Gorky’s work must be contextualised in dialogue with that of Andre Breton, Roberto Matta, Wifredo Lam, Max Ernst, who had come to New York to escape the war. The important exchanges he had with these artists place him at the heart of an international Surrealist network that amplifies the impact of his work, while complicating his recognised affiliation to New York Abstract Expressionism.