Gorky’s early life was disrupted when his father abandoned Turkey, his wife, and his family in order to avoid service in the Turkish army. The rest of the family soon fled to Armenia to escape Turkish persecution and were subsequently dispersed. In 1920 Gorky emigrated to the United States, where he rejoined his sister in Watertown, Mass., and assumed the pseudonym by which he became known. The name Arshile is derived from Achilles, the brooding Achaean hero of the Iliad. The name Gorky (Russian for “the bitter one”) is derived from that of the writer Maksim Gorky.
After studying painting at the Rhode Island School of Design, Gorky enthusiastically entered into the Bohemian life of Greenwich Village in New York City, occasionally passing himself off as a successful Russian portraitist who had studied in Paris and experimented with Automatism. From 1926-1931 he taught at the Grand Central School of Art. Early in his career, he hit on the idea of becoming a great painter by subjecting himself to long apprenticeships, painting in the style of such artists as Paul Cézanne, Joan Miró and Pablo Picasso. His aim was never merely to imitate the work of others, however, but to assimilate fully their aesthetic vision and then move beyond it.
