22 July 2010, Yerevan, Armenia, The exhibition of the American-Armenian artist Arshile Gorky at the Eagle Hall of the Cafesjian Center for the Arts is drawing to close. For ten days before the expected date of closure, on July 23 - August 1 2010 the admission to Arshile Gorky: Selections from the Gerard L. Cafesjian Collection exhibition will be free of charge. Free guided tours will also be provided to visitors on July 31 and August 1 – upon prior reservation. Gorky’s exhibition in Armenia opened in November 2009. Since then, it has been at the limelight of public attention, presenting 16 drawings and 7 paintings by the legend of American twentieth-century art. “This was the first major exhibition in Armenia of original work by Arshile Gorky - an artist once described by a critic of the time as a “hero of Abstract Expressionism”. This has been a truly tremendous cultural event for all of us, and the Cafesjian Center for the Arts invites everyone for another look at Gorky’s superb works”, Vahagn Marabyan, the acting Executive Director of the Cafesjian Center for the Arts said. Arshile Gorky fled Western Armenia during the genocide of 1915 and witnessed the death of his mother from starvation. After living in Yerevan for a period of time, he arrived in the United States in 1920 at the age of fifteen. Gorky remained passionate about Armenia throughout his life. In the many letters he sent to his brother Moorad and sister Vartoosh, he expressed a longing to return to Western Armenia, and wrote poetically about every possible aspect of the land: the ancient khachkars of its villages; the salty air of his native region of Van; the fragrance of the country’s mountain air; the dolma he ate as a youth; and, of course, his beloved Mount Ararat, “the brain of nature,” as he described it, “ordaining its movements.” Arshile Gorky eventually became one of the most influential painters of the twentieth century, and just as his career was reaching new heights, his life ended tragically in suicide in 1948. The Gorky exhibition was one of many exhibitions commemorating the opening of the Cafesjian Center for the Arts: a fitting tribute to a man whose death 60 years ago has been marked by major exhibitions of his work in museums throughout the world, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art and London’s Tate Modern.

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