Another canvas done jointly is "Abstraction (Conflicting Emotions)" (1936–37). There is the Picasso-like woman’s head, which was probably Gorky’s. The biomorphic, phallic object that confronts the head may well be Burkhardt’s, as is the grey slab on the lower left. The outrageous green that pervades the picture might be Gorky’s, as a similar color occurs in several of his pictures. The whole painting is redolent of conflict, and, indeed, both painters went through serious marital difficulties at that time. As a result, Burkhardt left New York for Los Angeles in 1937, soon after this painting was completed. In those economically difficult times, Hollywood studios offered possibilities for artists. Modern art, however, was barely considered in Los Angeles, as compared to New York.

In the years following Burkhardt’s departure, Gorky continued to make ever more vibrant and penetrating paintings, as concrete forms gave way to new painterly and fluid abstractions. In 1945 the "Pope" of Surrealism, André Breton, wrote that Gorky "found a code by reason of his sensitive anterior expressions, that can decode nature to reveal the very rhythm of life." Burkhardt, too, was privileged to find such a pictorial language. Having assimilated the biomorphic form, he produced paintings such as "Symphony" (1936–37), in which humanoid and zoomorphic beings are engaged in an animated dance, or, after having left New York, "Day and Night" (1937–38), with amorphous, bird-like shapes of pure fantasy.

The Los Angeles in which Burkhardt found himself lacked the community of avant-garde artists who were part of his New York environment. He was by himself now, and it was he who brought Abstract Expressionism to California. By 1939 he had a solo exhibition at the prestigious Stendahl Gallery, arranged by his friend Lorser Feitelson, who championed modern art in Los Angeles as an artist and influential teacher.

In the 1940s, Gorky suffered considerable hardships, including the loss of a number of works to fire, colon cancer, an automobile accident that immobilized his painting arm, and further marital crises. Gorky committed suicide in 1948, and afterward, Burkhardt continued to acknowledge his great debt to Gorky and paid him tribute by painting two plaintive, carefully composed versions of "Studio of Gorky." And during his sojourn in Mexico in 1950 he painted three versions of "The Burial of Gorky" (1950). In this sorrowful painting in blacks, grays and dark reds, three columnar pallbearers carry the solemn body of the deceased in a funeral cortege.

By this time Burkhardt had achieved independence from his mentor. This may have come about when he turned to the horrendous events of his time as subjects for some of his work. Beginning in 1938, Burkhardt addressed the subject of war in response to the bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War, not yet aware of Picasso’s famous picture. In an interview with the art critic Colin Gardner, he said, "The anti-war paintings were probably the first works that are truly my own. Before that I still made paintings that had influence." And, indeed, this protean humanist artist engaged with the horrors and cruelties of his time: the Nazi death camps, the Vietnam War, and, when he was almost 90, the Persian Gulf War, producing a series of paintings called "Desert Storms," and then his final works, "Black Rain." Writing about these, the critic Donald Kuspit affirmed, "These are not just great paintings, they are the work of a master ... I knew it had to exist in American paintings, and here it is."

EVENTS
The Arshile Gorky retrospective organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art will be on view Oct. 8, 2009–Jan. 3, 2010. The show will travel to the Tate Modern (Feb. 3–May 9, 2010) and to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (June 6–Sept. 6, 2010).
"Arshile Gorky: Drawings, The Early Years," now through Oct. 28, 2007, at the University of Virginia Art Museum. 434.924.3592.

Peter Selz is Professor Emeritus of the History of Art at the University of California, Berkeley, a distinguished museum curator and author of more than 20 books, including The Art of Engagement: Visual Politics in California and Beyond, which was honored with the College Art Association’s best art history book award in 2007. During his curatorial tenure at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, he brought to greater light many major artists; among them were Mark Rothko, Max Beckmann, Jean Dubuffet, Alberto Giacometti, Ferdinand Hodler, Sam Francis and innumerable contemporary artists.