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Vostanik Adoyan, better known as Arshile Gorky
(April_15, 1904 - July_21, 1948) was  an
Armenian-American abstract expressionism|abstract
expressionist painter.

Vostanik was born in Khorkom near Van, Turkey.
During the Turkish genocide of Armenians he fled
Van in 1915 and arrived in the USA in 1920.

When Gorky was four, his father emigrated to
America to avoid the draft, leaving his son
behind.  The two were reunited when Gorky came to
America at age 16, but they never grew close.  At
15, Gorky's mother died of starvation in his arms
during the Turkish genocide of Armenians.  At age
31, Gorky married.

In letters to his sisters Gorky often described
moods of melancholy, and expressed loneliness and
emptiness, nostalgia for his country; and bitterly
and vividly recalled the circumstances of his
mother's death.  

Two years before Gorky's death he underwent a
series of catastrophes.  His studio barn burned
down; he underwent a colostomy for cancer; his
neck was broken and his painting arm temporarily
paralyzed in a car accident; and his wife of seven
years left him, taking their children with her. 
Gorky ended his life in 1948, at age 44, when he
hanged himself.

As a survivor of the Armenian Genocide he was used
in an indirect role in Atom Egoyan's movie Ararat
(movie)|Ararat.

==External links==
*
http://www.guggenheim-venice.it/english/06_artists
/gorky.htm Peggy Guggenheim Collection
*
http://www.artnet.com/ag/fineartthumbnails.asp?aid
=7220 artnet - Arshile Gorky Art Images

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