Catalogue Number
JJ27

Still Life with Skull

c.1927-1928

Oil on canvas

33 1/2 in. x 26 3/4 in. (85 cm x 68 cm)

Unsigned and undated

Private Collection

Still Life with Skull
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(c) The Arshile Gorky Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Peter Schälchli

expandProvenance

The Estate of Arshile Gorky

expandExhibition History

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.  Arshile Gorky Memorial Exhibition.  5 January - 18 February 1951.  Traveled to the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN, 4 March - 22 April 1951; San Francisco Museum of Art, CA, 9 May - 9 July 1951.  Catalogue, no. 2. 

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Arshile Gorky 1904 - 1948: A Retrospective.  24 April - 19 July 1981.  Traveled to Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, TX, 11 September - 8 November, 1981; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA, 3 December 1981 - 28 February 1982.  Catalogue, no. 3, b/w ill.

Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA.  Cézanne and Beyond.  26 February - 17 May 2009.  Catalogue, no. 146, color ill.; detail p. 422.

Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA.  Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective.  15 October 2009 - 10 January 2010.  Traveled to Tate Modern, London, 10 February - 3 May 2010; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA, 6 June - 20 September 2010.  Catalogue, no. 8, color ill. 

expandBibliography

Lisa D. Corrin.  “Toward Armenia: Notes of a Journey,” in Arshile Gorky, 1904-1948.  Exhibition catalogue.  London: Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1990, p.160, b/w ill.

Elaine de Kooning. “Gorky: Painter of His Own Legend.”  ARTnews 49 (January 1951), p. 64, ill. p. 40.

Hayden Herrera. Arshile Gorky: His Life and Work.  New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2003, pp. 138, 181, fig. 76, b/w ill.

Jacob Kainen. “Memories of Arshile Gorky.” Arts Magazine 50 (March 1976), p. 96.

Melvin P. Lader.  Arshile Gorky.  New York: Abbeville Press, 1985, p. 23, fig. 14, b/w ill.

Nouritza Matossian.  Black Angel: The Life of Arshile Gorky.  London: Chatto & Windus, 1998; Woodstock & New York: The Overlook Press, 2000, p. 226.

Robert F. Reiff.  “A Stylistic Analysis of Arshile Gorky’s Art from 1943 – 1948.” Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1961, plate 7.  

Ethel Schwabacher.  Arshile Gorky.  New York: The Macmillan Company for the Whitney Museum of American Art, 1957, fig. 4, b/w ill. 

Matthew Spender.  From a High Place: A Life of Arshile Gorky.  New York: A.A. Knopf, 1999; Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000, p. 100.