Garden in Sochi

Mediums: oil, canvas.
Location: The Museum of Modern Art (New York, the USA).

Like many other things in the artist’s extraordinary life, the picture contains a certain mystification, a mixture of truth and fiction. The painter claimed that the garden in the city of Sochi belonged to his father and that he often spent time there as a child. Despite the fact that neither Gorky nor his father had never been to Sochi, the painting with its pictorial strength and expressiveness occupies an essential place in the artist’s creative legacy. It is rather a mixture of vivid images of the subconscious and scraps of his childhood memories than a pictorial description of a particular place on the map. The canvas is one of the first surrealistic works of Arshile and testifies to the formation of his bright painting style.