One Year the Milkweed

1944

Arshile Gorky

Artist, American, born Van Province, Ottoman Empire (now Turkey), c. 1904 - 1948

Abstracted forms are painted in grass green, black, pepper red, butter yellow, tawny beige, rose pink, and a few touches of ocean blue in this horizontal composition. The paint is applied thinly, almost like watercolor wash. Translucent layers of paint drip down the canvas and knit the colors and shapes together. Most of the forms create a roughly pyramidal shape at the center. Some are vaguely square-shaped while others are oval, circular, or triangular. Many of the forms are outlined in black, and some have spots of color at their centers. For instance, a cluster of shapes near the lower right includes two canted parallelograms outlined with black. One has an emerald-green oval at its center and the other a black oval. Other shapes in that area include a rust-red triangle, a solid black anvil-shaped form, and a butternut-orange circle surrounded by vibrant yellow. A caramel-brown area spans the bottom edge of the canvas. The artist signed and dated the lower left corner, “A. Gorky 44.”
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In One Year the Milkweed, one of several so-called color veil paintings Gorky made in 1944, films of paint have been washed unevenly across the canvas, and evocative but indistinct forms have been brushed in. Overall green and brown hues suggest a landscape, but there are no identifiable landscape forms and no spatial recession. Instead, vertical drips and the alternation of light and deep tones create a shifting, shimmering effect across the entire picture surface.

Gorky spent most of 1944 at the country estate of his wife's parents in Hamilton, Virginia, drawing, painting, and observing the changes of the seasons. His mood in One Year the Milkweed is one of lyricism and ease, and the painting could be described as a kind of abstract pastoral. The loose, wash technique of One Year the Milkweed reflects Gorky's interest in the surrealist procedure of automatism, which exploited apparently accidental effects arrived at by painting and drawing without premeditation. In surrealist theory, those accidental effects were seen as revelatory of unconscious thought processes. The title of One Year the Milkweed was given to the painting by Gorky's friend, the great surrealist poet and theorist André Breton.

One Year the Milkweed (English)
View Tour Stop
On View

NGA, East Building, EU-407-B, E

Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on canvas

  • Credit Line

    Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund

  • Dimensions

    overall: 94.2 x 119.3 cm (37 1/16 x 46 15/16 in.)
    framed: 97.1 x 122.5 x 3.8 cm (38 1/4 x 48 1/4 x 1 1/2 in.)

  • Accession

    1979.13.2

  • Copyright

    © 1997 The Estate of Arshile Gorky / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

The estate of the artist; private collection, late 1960s;[1] (Xavier Fourcade, Inc., New York); purchased 28 February 1979 by NGA.
[1] This is possibly A.G. Phillips, whose name appears on 1966 and 1968 Museum of Modern Art (New York) loan labels removed from the backing board of the painting, in NGA curatorial files.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1945

  • Arshile Gorky, Julien Levy Gallery, New York, 1945, no. 2.

1957

  • 33 Paintings by Arshile Gorky, Sidney Janis Gallery, New York, 1957, no. 17, repro.

1965

  • Arshile Gorky: Paintings and Drawings, Tate Gallery, London; Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels; Museum Boymans-Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, 1965, no. 56 (London) and no. 67 (Rotterdam), repro. (mistakenly illustrated by The Horns of the Landscape).

1966

  • Two Decades of American Painting, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1966.

1968

  • Dada, Surrealism, and Their Heritage, Museum of Modern Art, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Art Institute of Chicago, 1968, no. 138, fig. 269.

1969

  • Paintings, sculptures, drawings and etchings by Arshile Gorky, Willem de Kooning and Barnett Newman, M. Knoedler & Co., New York, 1969, no catalogue.

1972

  • Le surrealisme, 1922-1942, Haus der Kunst, Munich; Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Paris, 1972, no. 188 (Munich), no 183 (Paris).

1978

  • Abstract Expressionism: The Formative Years, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Ithaca; Seibu Museum of Art, Tokyo; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1978, fig. 63.

1979

  • Arshile Gorky, Xavier Fourcade, Inc., New York, 1979, unnumbered catalogue, repro.

1980

  • La Pintura de Los Estados Unidos de Museos de la Ciudad de Washington, Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, 1980-1981, no. 68, color repro.

1981

  • Arshile Gorky 1904-1948: A Retrospective, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Dallas Museum of Fine Arts; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1981-1982, no. 165, repro.

1984

  • Reflections of Nature: Flowers in American Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1984, fig. 66.

1987

  • Abstract Expressionism: The Critical Developments, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, 1987, no. 8, repro.

1989

  • Arshile Gorky: 1904-1948, Fundación Caja de Pensiones, Madrid; Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1989-1990, no. 34, repro.

1991

  • André Breton: La beauté convulsive, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Centro Arte Reina Sophia, Madrid, 1991, unnumbered catalogue, repro. (title of Spanish catalogue: André Breton y el surrealismo).

1993

  • American Art in the 20th Century: Painting and Sculpture 1913-1993, Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin; Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1993, no. 80, repro.

1995

  • Arshile Gorky: The Breakthrough Years, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, 1995-1996, no. 8, repro.

2005

  • Surrealism USA, National Academy of Design, New York; Phoenix Art Museum, 2005, pl. 85.

2009

  • Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective, Philadelphia Museum of Art; Tate Modern, London; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2009-2010, no. 120, repro.

2015

  • Collection Conversations: The Chrysler and the National Gallery, Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, 2015, no catalogue.

2019

  • Arshile Gorky 1904 - 1948, Ca' Pesaro Galleria Internazionale d'Arte Moderna, Venice, 2019.

Bibliography

1980

  • American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1980: 166, repro.

1981

  • Williams, William James. A Heritage of American Paintings from the National Gallery of Art. New York, 1981: color repro. 222, 243, 244, repro. 244-45.

1989

  • Strick, Jeremy. Twentieth Century Painting and Sculpture: Selections for the Tenth Anniversary of the East Building. Washington, D.C., 1989: repro. 60, 61.

1992

  • American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 189, repro.

  • National Gallery of Art, Washington. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 263, repro.

1995

  • Arshile Gorky: The Breakthrough Years. Exh. cat. National Gallery of Art, Washington; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, 1995-1996: no. 8.

2004

  • Hand, John Oliver. National Gallery of Art: Master Paintings from the Collection. Washington and New York, 2004: 450, no. 377, color repro.

2009

  • Cooper, Harry. The Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Collection: Selected Works. Exh. cat. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2009: 16, repro. 17.

2010

  • Gale, Matthew. Arshile Gorky: Enigma and Nostalgia. London, 2010: 71, fig. 34.

Inscriptions

lower left: A. Gorky / 44; center stretcher bar reverse: Arshile Gorky / 1944

Wikidata ID

Q20193563

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