Arshile Gorky

This award-winning 1982 documentary includes in-depth interviews with Willem and Elaine de Kooning as well as archival footage of Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, and Harold Rosenberg in conversation.

Born in Armenia, Arshile Gorky fled the Turkish persecution and arrived in America in 1920. One of America`s most poetic and powerful painters, Gorky`s influence on his contemporaries gave birth to the New York School of abstract expressionist painting. In rare glimpses into his studio and through interviews with family and friends, this film recreates Gorky`s world, examines the progression of his painting to the later, deeply felt work, that suggests the beauty and anguish of his lost Armenian homeland.