Summation, created by Arshile Gorky in 1947, stands as a seminal example of the artist's late style, successfully bridging European Surrealism and the nascent American Abstract Expressionist movement. This complex piece utilizes pencil, pastel, and charcoal on buff paper mounted on board, showcasing Gorky's highly developed command of draftsmanship and chromatic tension achieved through mixed media. The composition exemplifies the artist's move away from traditional figuration toward a world of biomorphic abstraction.
Executed just a year before Gorky's untimely death, the structure of Summation reflects the intense emotional and formal experimentation he undertook during 1947. The foundational pencil and charcoal provide a skeletal framework, while vibrant pastels introduce fluid, ambiguous forms characteristic of his mature output. These shapes are often suggestive of visceral and natural elements-combining plant, animal, and bodily imagery-and float within a shallow, atmospheric space. The technique emphasizes translucency and layering, allowing the warm tone of the underlying buff paper to contribute actively to the overall color palette. This radical exploration of organic abstraction cemented Gorky’s pivotal position as a foundational figure in American modern art.
Gorky’s unique synthesis of automatic drawing techniques, derived from Surrealist contemporaries like André Breton, and his highly personalized visual language proved profoundly influential on the subsequent generation of artists working in the United States. Although classified as a drawing due to its medium, the work's monumental scale and ambition position it conceptually alongside his major paintings of the period. This significant piece is held in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. For researchers and enthusiasts seeking deep engagement with this period, high-resolution images and prints of key Abstract Expressionist works often enter the public domain, extending the reach and study of masters like Gorky globally.
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