Composition

A cream-colored field holds a cluster of flat shapes rendered in black, red, yellow, and green, each one bounded by dark contour lines that separate and link the forms across the canvas. The shapes sit close together, some curved and some angular, giving the surface a quality of overlapping cutouts pressed into a single plane. This piece dates to 1937 and was made with enamel on canvas; it is held at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. It was painted by Arshile Gorky (1904–1948), an Armenian-American artist associated with abstract expressionism. Looking closely, the thick black outlines seem to hold every color in place, giving the whole arrangement a sense of structure despite the lack of any recognizable object or scene.