Please note the exhibition will be temporarily closed from 12th - 23rd May.
The Thread of Colour, a major show, and celebration of the life and work of Armenian-American artist Maro Gorky (b. New York 1943) will open at Saatchi Gallery, London on 28 March and runs until 13 May 2025. The exhibition features a selection of important oil paintings spanning her career as an artist from the 1980s to the present day. Subject matter includes Gorky's family, the Tuscan home she has lived in with her sculptor husband Matthew Spender since the 1960s, and landscapes from the Sienese countryside and beyond. Gorky studied at the Slade School of Art under Frank Auerbach and began to exhibit her work in the early 1980s with exhibitions in London, Milan, Los Angeles and New York.
This exhibition follows on from Gorky's highly successful 2023 retrospective show at Long & Ryle in London, which celebrated her 80th birthday. The accompanying exhibition Maps of Feelings opensat Long & Ryle from 5th March – 2nd May 2025, and features a selection of Gorky’s works on paper, an important element of her artistic practice.
Dominating the Saatchi Gallery exhibition are two large-scale landscapes, Autumn Vines (2025) and Spring Vines (2025). These ambitious works, only recently completed with the last strokes being added just in time for the show, demonstrate that Maro Gorky, in her eighties, remains as powerful and prolific a painter as she was in her twenties.
Maro Gorky's landscapes are very satisfying to look at. Her stained-glass colour, crisp shapes and compositional majesty instil her syntheses of previous art with the force of an individual intently focused personality. You can't ask much more of art - Roberta Smith, New York Times
In the 80s and 90s Gorky’s personal view of the world was expressed in portraits of people she knew and loved. These works strike a deep note when they reflect upon personal memories, such as Connecticut Wedding (1991) which depicts the marriage of her great-grandmother. In The Etruscans (1991) painted in earthy colours, Gorky emphasises her and her husband’s commitment to their home in Tuscany and the local inhabitants, who have become their lasting friends.
Last Act (1980), exhibited in Gorky's first London exhibition in 1983 at the Wraxall Gallery with Sarah Long, depicts a young girl with her lover. Amidst the Tuscan landscape, she stands in lovingly painted fronds and petals of wildflowers, and the couple gaze outward in an idealised, romantic pose. Gorky has consistently painted her daughters, Saskia and Cosima, along with their friends and families. Over time, the portraits have become more simplified, and a sense of medieval maternity is often referred to in the portraits of her daughters.
Both Gorky's landscapes and portraits suggest a newfound reverence for the sacred, expressed through simplified shapes while maintaining a focus on the Tuscan landscape's formal structure. Discerning influences and derivations in Gorky's work is complex, as her canvases exude powerful emotions and energy. While Gorky references Byzantine icons, Botticelli, and medieval religious art, her art transcends simple categorisation.
The accompanying exhibition Maps of Feelings at Long & Ryle features a selection of Gorky’s works on paper. These luminous landscapes, painted in watercolour or egg tempera (a technique learned from a Greek Orthodox nun), are a response to the countryside surrounding her home, as well as travels in China, Greece, and the Sinai Desert.
A short film made by Gorky’s daughter Cosima Spender, an award-winning film director, producer and writer, will be premiered alongside the Saatchi exhibition. The film explores her mother’s artistic practice and style, delving into her perception of the world and how it translates into her landscapes and portraits. Through Gorky’s own words, the film reveals the artist’s intentions and aspirations behind her life’s work.
