You get less for your money here in comparison to van Doesburg; the paintings speak for themselves but there just seems to be fewer works to see with less expertise expended over their curation. One of the American greats of the 20th Century, Gorky was a tormented genius who committed suicide after a series of personal tragedies and injury. His early works clearly show the influence of Cezanne and Picasso but he developed his own style of impressionist realism with his portraits; the two versions of The Artist and His Mother being the stand-out pieces of the exhibition. In his later works he developed an abstract expressionist style dominated by bright colours, curling black lines and fluid forms. Some of these are haunting in their nightmarish non-specificity and their use of dark colours and large foreboding shapes. Serene works like Waterfall (1943), dominated by a wash of green with bright yellow shapes, appear alongside angry paintings like Agony (1947) with its angular black and orange shapes on a background of livid red. There is an infinite variety of mood conjured by these paintings, all expressed in an energetic and individual style which embodies a rich emotional life despite the outward effortlessness of the composition.
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