Arshile Gorky

Gorky’s youth was almost as tragic as his early death. In 1915–16, after the outbreak of the First World War, the Ottoman Turks, distrusting their Armenian neighbours, launched a savage campaign against them that became known as the Armenian massacre. Gorky’s father had emigrated to the United States years earlier, leaving Gorky, his mother and his sister to fend for themselves. Gorky, then only in his teens, became an ammunition carrier for his country’s poorly armed defenders, but eventually he and his family were forced to flee. They walked 118 miles in just eight days to cross safely into Russia, but the respite proved only temporary. In 1919, in terrible poverty, Gorky’s mother died of starvation in her son’s arms. The following year Gorky fled to America. He never mentioned his Armenian roots, not even to his wife; he let his emotionally charged paintings speak for him.

From the page of One Year the Milkweed