Portrait of Mougouch

After World War I, the Turkish government’s persecution of Armenians, and the subsequent threat of civil war, Arshile Gorky (born Vosdanik Adoian) and his family fled Armenia for America. There, he attended the New School of Design in Boston (1922–24), adopting the pseudonym “Arshile Gorky” (with variant spellings until 1932). Moving to New York City in 1924, he enrolled at the National Academy of Design and the Grand Central School of Art in 1925, where he also taught until 1931. Gorky’s early landscapes and still-lifes from the 1920s reflected the influence of Paul Cézanne, but by the 1930s he had evolved a flat, synthetic cubist style derived from Pablo Picasso. By the early 1940s, Gorky had formed close friendships with several members of the Surrealist Group in New York, including Matta, who encouraged him to develop his own personal abstract language through experimentation with auromatism and biomorphic forms.
In January 1941 Gorky was persuaded to join Bill and Elaine de Kooning at a party in Manhattan, with the promise that he would be introduced to a young, beautiful art student, who was lively and full of fire. At the party, Gorky and the art student, though side by side, did not speak until the very end when they were about to leave, and Gorky invited her for a coffee. She was Agnes Magruder, a nineteen year-old woman from Boston. This was the start of an intense relationship that resulted in marriage that autumn in Virginia City. Shortly after meeting her, Gorky renamed her ‘Mougouch’, a term of endearment meaning ‘little powerful-one’ in Russian. In this tender and intimate drawing from 1942, in which Mougouch is wearing Gorky’s hat, the confidence in line is very clearly apparent; Mougouch looking into the middle distance is at ease as a sitter and as a result, Gorky has captured at the same time, her dreamy expression and aura of confidence.
We are very grateful to The Arshile Gorky Foundation for their assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.