Black Angel - The Life of Arshile Gorky (Hardcover)

Arshile Gorky is one of the most mysterious of major twentieth-century artists. Born Armenian, he adopted the cover of a famous Russian name, and paradoxically helped to change the course of American art. The art critic Robert Hughes wrote in The Shock of the New, "Gorky's life as a mature artist formed a kind of Bridge of Sighs between Surrealism and America; he was the last major painter Breton claimed for Surrealism and the first Abstract Expressionist as well". In this first full-scale biography, Nouritza Matossian charts Gorky's tumultuous life from his childhood to his evolution into a key figure on the New York art scene of the 30s and 40s to his tragic last years.

Handsome and deeply intense about art, he cut a dramatic figure among the Abstract Expressionists, influencing a generation of painters including de Kooning, Rothko, and Pollack. This powerfully revealing biography sheds crucial new light on Gorky's passionate life and monumental legacy.