Cornfield of Health II
Framed: 38 1/2 x 46 5/16 inches (97.79 x 117.63 cm)
Arshile Gorky , The Museum of Modern Art, New York, December 19, 1962-February 12, 1963; Washington Gallery of Modern Art, Washington, DC, March 12-April 14, 1963, no. 60, as Untitled.
Drawings & , University Art Museum, University of Texas, Austin, February 6-March 15, 1966, as Housatonic.
Arshile Gorky, 1904-1948, A Retrospective , The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, April 24-July 19, 1981; Dallas Museum of Art, September 11-November 8, 1981; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, December 3, 1981-February 28, 1982, no. 168.
Arshile Gorky: The Breakthrough Years , National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, May 7-September 17, 1995; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY, October 13-December 31, 1995; Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, TX, January 13-March 17, 1996, no. 3.
A liquidity of paint, rich colors and delicate black lines enliven the softly brushed forms in Cornfield of Health II. Just below the center and to the right floats an ovoid of yellow with a blue and black center. A signature motif in Gorky's work, this shape recalls a cell and its nucleus, thus evoking the eternal flux of life.
The artist’s estate, 1948-July 26, 1961;
Purchased from the artist’s estate, through Sidney Janis Gallery, New York, by Galerie Beyeler, Basel, Switzerland, stock no. 3084, as Untitled (Housatonic Period), July 26, 1961-October 25, 1962 [1];
Purchased from Galerie Beyeler by the dealer Harold Diamond (1926-1982), New York, NY, October 25, 1962 [2];
With Allan Stone Galleries, New York, by November 27, 1962;
Purchased from Allan Stone Galleries by Stephen D. (1932-1997) and Susan Woods Paine, Boston, MA, November 27, 1962-December 1965;
Purchased from Stephen D. and Susan Woods Paine by Allan Stone Galleries, New York, as Housatonic, December 1965-May 4, 1966 [3];
Purchased from Allan Stone Galleries by the Friends of Art, Kansas City, MO, as Housatonic, May 4, 1966;
Their gift to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1966 [4].
NOTES:
[1] According to Anna McCormick-Goodhart, The Arshile Gorky Foundation, in an email to MacKenzie Mallon, Specialist, Provenance, October 30, 2020, and E. Beyeler, Galerie Beyeler, in a letter to Charles S. Moffett, NAMA Ford Foundation Fellow, December 9, 1969, NAMA curatorial files. See also Jim M. Jordan and Robert Goldwater, The Paintings of Arshile Gorky: A Critical Catalogue (New York: New York University Press, 1982), 452-53.
[2] According to McCormick-Goodhart, as relayed to her by the Fondation Beyeler.
[3] According to McCormick-Goodhart, records in the Allan Stone Galleries archives indicate the Paines consigned the painting to Allan Stone Galleries from April 16, 1964 until the Galleries’ purchase in December 1965. For the painting’s title, see Allan Stone’s letter to Charles S. Moffett, November 7, 1969, NAMA curatorial files.
[4] The painting’s title was changed to Cornfield of Health II at the suggestion of the artist’s widow, Agnes Gorky Phillips, as relayed by Xavier Fourcade, Director, M. Knoedler & Co., in a letter to Charles S. Moffett, July 8, 1970, NAMA curatorial files.
William Seitz, Arshile Gorky, exh cat. (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1962), 54, as Untitled.
Donald L. Hoffmann, “For Friends of Art: Four Lively Paintings,” The Kansas City Star (May 6, 1966), (repro.).
Donald L. Hoffmann, “$24,500 for a Landscape by Gorky,” The Kansas City Star (May 6, 1966), (repro.).
Drawings & , exh cat. (Austin, TX: University Art Museum of the University of Texas, 1966), 18.
Ross E. Taggart and George L. McKenna, eds., Handbook of the Collections in The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri , vol. 1, Art of the Occident, 5th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1973), 209, (repro.).
Diane Waldman, Arshile Gorky, 1904-1948, A Retrospective, exh. cat. (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1981), 195, (repro.).
Jim M. Jordan and Robert Goldwater, The Paintings of Arshile Gorky: A Critical Catalogue (New York: New York University Press, 1982), no. 295, pp. 452-53, (repro.).
Melvin P. Lader, Arshile Gorky (New York: Abbeville Press, 1985), 122, (repro.).
Roger Ward and Patricia J. Fidler, eds., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection (New York: Hudson Hills Press, in association with Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1993), 250, (repro.).
Peter Balakian, “Arshile Gorky and the Armenian Genocide,” Art in America 84 (February 1996), 59.
Karen Lee Spaulding, ed., Arshile Gorky: The Breakthrough Years, exh. cat. (Fort Worth, TX: Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, 1996, 94-95, (repro.).
Deborah Emont Scott, ed., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection, 7th ed. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2008), 209, (repro.).
Saskia Spender, ed., Ardent Nature: Arshile Gorky Landscapes, 1943-47, exh, cat. (New York: Hauser & Wirth, 2017), 34-35, 138, (repro.).
