Black Angel: The Life of Arshile Gorky

In “Black Angel,” the first full-scale biography of Arshile Gorky, one of the most mysterious of major twentieth-century artists, Nouritza Matossian uses for the first time his original letters in Armenian and other new source material, writing about the powerful influence the painter’s Armenian heritage had upon his work. She also provides an informed and important critique of the entire body of his major work. Gorky, a genocide survivor, was one of the first abstract expressionists and a major influence on the New York art scene, which included de Kooning, Rothko, Pollock, and others.