In this first full-scale biography of the artist Robert Hughes called "a kind of Bridge of Sighs between Surrealism and America," Nouritza Matossian charts the life of Arshile Gorky, one of the most mysterious of major twentieth-century artists. Born in Armenia, he survived the Turkish genocide begun in 1915 and arrived in America in 1920. One of the first abstract expressionists, he was a major influence on the New York art scene, which included de Kooning, Rothko, Pollock, and others