Still Life (Composition with Vegetables)

Arshile Gorky (born Vosdanig Adoian), an Armenian refugee to the United States, settled in New York City in 1924 and embarked on a series of self-imposed apprenticeships to the virtuosos of modern art. Believing that an artist’s discovery of their unique style could come only after thoroughly studying the innovations of other painters, Gorky made frequent visits to Albert Eugene Gallatin’s Gallery of Living Art at New York University, one of the first public collections of modern art in the United States. Gorky made his own variations on works by artists such as Paul Cézanne and Giorgio de Chirico in order to master their techniques, but his most enduring and productive engagement was with Pablo Picasso. Composition with Vegetables features the colorful palette and flattened, overlapping forms typical of Picasso’s Synthetic Cubist still lifes.