Collection Conversations: Arshile Gorky: Between Worlds

Welcome to the third of a series of exhibitions pairing works from the Chrysler Collection with masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. It features a collection of works by Arshile Gorky and includes a bonus loan of a Gustav Klimt work.

Arshile Gorky: Between Worlds
Arshile Gorky ranks among the most inventive and eclectic of American modernist painters. Beginning his career in the 1920s as a figurative artist, he ultimately devised a complex biomorphic surrealist style that placed him by the early 1940s in the vanguard of Abstract Expressionism.

This Collection Conversations exhibit brings together paintings from both the Chrysler and National Gallery of Art to trace the creative arc of this singular modernist genius.

Gustav Klimt: Baby (Cradle)
Gustav Klimt stood at the creative pinnacle of the Austrian Art Nouveau. His densely worked, jewel-like portraits and complex allegorical canvases captured the mystery and heightened sensuality of late 19th-century Viennese society. Among his most unusual works, Baby depicts an infant lying in a cradle, his tiny head just visible beneath billowing layers of brightly-hued coverlets.

The Chrysler is indeed grateful to the National Gallery of Art for this extraordinarily generous loan from its collection.

Left: Arshile Gorky, The Artist and His Mother, oil on canvas, ca. 1926. National Gallery of Art.

Right: Gustav Klimt, Baby (Cradle), oil on canvas, ca. 1917-18. National Gallery of Art.