Seated Figure
1934
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View on museum website →Medium
graphite on wove paper
Dimensions
sheet: 26.67 × 20.32 cm (10 1/2 × 8 in.)
Classification
Drawing
Department
CG-W
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Corcoran Collection (Gift of Olga Hirshhorn)
Accession Number
2015.19.3374
Art Historical Context
Arshile Gorky's *Seated Figure* (1934) is a delicate graphite drawing on wove paper measuring 10 1/2 × 8 inches. Created during the artist's early maturity New York amid the Great, it captures a contemplative human form through fluid, expressive lines. Gorky, an Armenian-American painter and draftsman (1904–1948), was then deeply influenced by European modernists like Picasso and Miró, blending Cubist fragmentation with emerging organic abstraction in his figurative studies. This intimate drawing exemplifies Gorky's use of graphite, a medium that allowed him to explore contour, shadow, and vo...