Bitter Life of a 'Bitter' Artist

The life of Arshile Gorky, one of the most famous mid-century American artists, was marked by tragedy from the very beginning.  Born around 1902 in an Armenian province of Ottoman Turkey, he and his family experienced the horror of the 1915 Genocide, during which more than a million Armenians were massacred.  Somehow, he, his mother and three sisters escaped, though a few short years later, his mother died of starvation.  At the age of 16, he managed to find his way to America, eventually settling in New York in 1924.  In the following twenty plus years, this self-taught painter absorbed the lessons of a number of great artists, from Cezanne to Picasso to Miro....