Head

Arshile Gorky’s short-lived relationship with Edith Halpert’s Downtown Gallery, in 1931, likely came through his friend Stuart Davis, who regularly exhibited there. Records in the Archives of American Art indicate that Gorky sent the gallery seven works in three installments during the year, the last being Head on September 21, 1931. This date, in fact, is to be found on the painting’s stretcher. Head would feature the following month in the gallery’s Artists’ Models: Opening Exhibition of Figure Paintings by Leading Contemporary American Arts, a selection of twenty-five paintings by a diverse array of artists such as George Ault, Stuart Davis, Jules Pascin, and Max Weber. It is unclear why Gorky’s relationship with the gallery terminated, as Halpert was able to sell two works during the year – in addition to prints – and Gorky did not have a gallery regularly showing his work until the mid 1930s.

Stylistically, this painting dates from a period when Gorky was inspired by the work of Pablo Picasso. Head was probably painted with the 1929 issue of Cahier d’Art nearby, which featured several articles on Picasso. The yellow and black square form in the lower right quadrant of Head derives from two Picasso paintings reproduced in “Les derniéres oeuvres de Picasso” by Christian Zervos. This composition would be explored more elaborately in Gorky’s masterpiece of the mid 1930s, Organization (National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC). The use of the square form in Head – combined with the black striped patterning atop a white ground, which is more prevalent in the artist’s work of the early 1930s – suggests that this painting was began in 1931 and later reworked as Gorky became immersed in the compositional topography of Organization.