Summation

Arshile Gorky

1947

A monumental drawing in pencil, pastel, and charcoal on buff paper mounted on board in which Arshile Gorky condenses dreamlike, biomorphic motifs into a single, elegiac composition.

You first notice a warm, worn ground filled with faint, whispering outlines—spidery graphite, soft charcoal smudges and tiny pastel accents that float like fragments of plants and figures across a vast, airy surface, as if reading a half-remembered dream.

Made near the end of his life, Summation exemplifies Gorky’s synthesis of Surrealist automatism and lyrical abstraction and helped point the way toward the emotionally charged, biomorphic language of American Abstract Expressionism.

Palette

Art Terms

Automatism Charcoal Pastel Pencil Biomorphic Surrealism Abstract Expressionism

Exhibitions

Arshile Gorky: Paintings, Drawings, Studies

1962

Cubism and Abstract Art

1936

Arp on Paper

1977

Abstract Painting; Shapes of Things

1941