Introduction

"Easy-going amateurs will come here for their meager rewards: in spite of all warning to the contrary they will insist on seeing in these compositions a still-life, a landscape, or a figure instead of daring to face the hybrid forms in which all human emotion is precipitated."

—Andre Breton, 1945, on Gorky

Arshile Gorky was a pivotal figure in the development of modern art in America. An immigrant from Armenia, Gorky processed avant-garde ideas and movements such as impressionism, cubism, and surrealism, often following closely on the heels of masters such as Paul Cezanne, Joan Miro, and Pablo Picasso, while at other times finding original pathways out from their shadows. By the late 1930s and up until his untimely death in 1948, Gorky mastered an original and groundbreaking style that paved the way for younger artists such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, who fomented the now-famous movement of abstract expressionism. How My Mother's Embroidered Apron Unfolds in My Life often poses more questions than it answers, serving as an eloquent touchstone for many of the pressing issues that shaped art at the time of its making.