Arshile Gorky’s ‘Charred Beloved I’ to be put up for auction at Christie’s

The canvas ‘Charred Beloved I’ by the Armenian-born American artist, one of the founders of abstract expressionism, Arshile Gorky, will be auctioned at Christie’s in New York. The masterpiece is estimated at more than $20 million.

Painted in the wake of the artist’s devastating studio fire in 1946, the canvas defined Gorky’s signature style. This tragic event was a devastating blow, but it was not the first time Gorky was forced to start anew.

In 1915, during the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire, the artist fled with his mother and three sisters, first to Tiflis and then to Yerevan. After his mother died of starvation in 1919, Gorky emigrated to the United States.

“A most awesome phoenix: how Arshile Gorky rose from the ashes to create a masterpiece,” Christie’s wrote of the artist.