A journey through a family myth that strips back the layers of interpretation built up around Arshile Gorky, the Abstract Expressionist painter, since his suicide in 1944.
Through the eyes of three generations- wife, daughter and granddaughter- we will get to understand not only the artistic legacy, but the personal legacy Gorky left behind. Using the body of Gorky’s paintings spanning his whole career, the flesh of the story is director, and granddaughter, of the artist Cosima Spender's personal exploration of his legacy. A love story between Art and Life, between Gorky and her grandmother, Mougouche, now aged 90 and the last living person who really knew him. A refugee who escaped the atrocities of the 1915 Armenian genocide, Vostanik Adoian changed his name to Arshile Gorky when he landed in Ellis Island as a teenager, going on to reinvent himself and become the father of American Abstract Expressionism.
Cosima Spender
Peacock Pictures
Anna Teeman/End Street Productions
Dadourian Foundation