Arshile Gorky

Born Vostanik Manoug Adoian in a village by Lake Van in the Ottoman Empire, Arshile Gorky's early life was marked by profound loss. In 1915, he fled the Armenian genocide with his mother and sisters, only for his mother to die of starvation in Yerevan in 1919. Arriving in America in 1920, he reinvented himself, adopting the name "Arshile Gorky" and claiming Georgian noble heritage, even a connection to writer Maxim Gorky. This reinvention set the stage for a career that woul…