BLACK ANGEL

Eloquently and movingly, music critic and biographer Matossian (Xenakis, not reviewed) plumbs the mystery surrounding

painter Arshile Gorky, born Manoug Adoian (1902–1948). Matossian lyrically sketches Manoug's troubled childhood in Khorkum near picturesque Lake Van, Armenia, in which the boy, though late in speaking and often silent, early showed a proclivity for drawing and painting. Tragedy, later reflected in his paintings, pervaded the artist's childhood: He endured the Turkish anti-Armenian pogrom of 1908 and the attempted genocide of 1915–20; his father fled to America when he was six; and as refugees in 1919, he and his sister Vartoosh witnessed the death from privation of their beloved mother Shushan, whom the artist would obsessively paint for the rest of his life. In 1920, Manoug and Vartoosh fled for America, where he eventually drifted into New York art circles, assumed the name Gorky, and quickly established himself as an important artist in the tradition of Cezanne and Picasso: later, he was influenced by Surrealist painter Roberto Matta. While not neglecting Gorky's art—some important works are analyzed in depth, and Gorky's often inventive techniques are described in detail—Matossian is also interested in the painter’s complex psychology, his usually easygoing but sometimes turbulent personality, his delight in line and color, his tumultuous relationships with women. Basing her narrative on interviews with surviving members of the artist's family, Matossian recounts the tragedies that continued to punctuate his life: Between 1946 and 1948, most of his paintings were destroyed in a fire; he suffered first cancer and then paralysis in a car accident; and he was abandoned by his wife, who betrayed him with Matta. Deprived of his work and his family, he committed suicide. A powerfully researched, thoughtful, and sensitive biography of a tragic hero of American painting, and one of 20th-century

art's most distinctive figures. (16 color and 31 b&w illus., not seen)