Art & Money ESSEC class, February 2010

Florentine Poncelet

Real name: Vosdanig Adoian, Armenian-born American Painter 1904-1948

1914: his father left the family and emigrated to America

1915: Armenian genocide, A. Gorky and his family emigrated from Turkish

Armenia to Yerevan 1919: his mother died from starvation

1920: A. Gorky, aged 16, emigrated to the USA The 20’s and 30’s: he studied design and painting in renowned American

schools in Boston and NY, then became a teacher at the NY Grand Central School of Art. First pieces of work.

The 40’s: masterpieces period, liberation of expressionism 1948: He committed suicide

Elements of biography: a tragic destiny

His work has been haunted by the painful memory of his

roots: the Armenian genocide, the loss of his parents, and the emigration

There are two redundant characters in his collection: his mother and the Armenian landscape

Paintings related to his roots

The artist and his mother 1926-1936

Garden in Sochi, 1941 (series)

Garden in Sochi, 1941 (series) Nighttime, enigma, nostalgia

Influences: European artists (school of Paris) such as Cézanne, Matisse, Picasso, Miro

In his first pieces of art, he worked through the knowledge of these modern art masters

An under-estimated artist : - American experts first rejected his work pretending he was just copying

surrealist European painters : the USA wanted their own artistic identity

- His obsession for accuracy/preparatory work was opposed to an expected

form of spontaneity in a post-war context

The question of the influences: is Gorky just an imitator of Surrealism ?

Portrait of Vartoosh, 1927 Pencil on card

Painter and model, 1931 Lithograph on paper

Nighttime, enigma, nostalgia

Nighttime, enigma, nostalgia, 1931 Chinese ink on paper

Nighttime, enigma, nostalgia

Later on, he found his own style… - Explosion of colors (Colorfield) - Monumentalization of the pieces - disappearance of outlines - drips of paint (Action Painting, Pollock) … And eventually public opinion considered him as the first Abstract

Expressionist painter Now he’s renowned as one of the greatest American painter of the XXth

century Precursor of the School of New-York and one of the influences of De

Kooning or Pollock

Or a precursor of Abstract Expressionism?

Waterfall, 1941

Intermediary between the European heritage and the American post-war modernity

He’s described as the last surrealist and the first abstract expressionnist painter

Exhibitions in Paris at Centre Pompidou http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lx0Q9KB7EcI&feature=related

The genius of an Expressionist

Thank you for your attention!