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UPPING THE ANTE IN CHIANTI
By Fiona MacLeod
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/2fdf2b60-6f5e-11e1-b368-00144feab49a.html#axzz1pynvjA00
March 23, 2012 9:18 pm
Painter Maro Gorky, who left hectic London for Tuscany, talks about
the sense of belonging to a particular country
Maro Gorky with peacocks outside her home in Tuscany
Trying to work out from which country Maro Gorky is expatriate is
a puzzle. For more than four decades the painter and her husband
Matthew Spender, a sculptor, have lived in rural Tuscany, creating
and embellishing their house and garden on a hillside in Chianti
so that it is an elaborate collaboration of their twin arts. "The
Italians certainly consider me English," says Gorky. "Our weird life
to them is so un-Italian. We dress so badly for one, we don't keep
up appearances as they do - we don't have the bella figura." The
Italians, according to Gorky, don't like to show any cracks in the
surface. "Our Anglo-Saxon attitude is quite different."
Gorky's parents came from cultural backgrounds that were poles apart.
Her father, the Armenian abstract expressionist painter Arshile Gorky
(a retrospective of his work took place in 2010 at Tate Modern in
London), emigrated to the US as a young man, having lost his mother
to starvation during the Armenian massacre in Turkey during the first
world war. His early life was one of oppression and hardship. Her
mother was from a well-to-do Bostonian family, with a naval officer
father who had postings all over the world. Their life was one of
comfort and privilege.
When Maro was five, Gorky took his own life and, shortly after, she,
her sister and her mother left the US to live in Positano on Italy's
Amalfi coast. "Mummy was like a character in a Henry James novel,"
says Gorky. "We rented beautiful houses in Italy, Spain, France then
England and met hordes of interesting people. She loved to have a
changing backdrop and a cast of thousands."
One summer, on holiday in Crete, Gorky met Matthew Spender, son of the
poet Stephen Spender, at the home of the neo-Romantic painter John
Craxton. They have been together ever since, even while Gorky went
to study at the Slade School of Fine Art and Matthew read history
at Oxford. "We lived in a beautiful little flat in Percy Street [in
London] that belonged to George Orwell's wife Sonia - George's old
clothes were still in the attic."
In 1968 the couple left England for Italy in search of a new life
in the country. "We needed to escape from our parents in London,"
she says. "Their networks were overpowering ... " Gorky says that
she and her husband were sure, at the time, that anyone in Italy who
worked the soil was a rustic philosopher.
At Avane, their Tuscan farmhouse, almost everything you look at is
made or decorated by Gorky or her husband. There are mad, beaded
chandeliers and lampshades, frescoed walls, painted furniture, and,
of course, Gorky's striking paintings and Spender's serene sculptures.
The couple's daughters, Cosima and Saskia, grew up here, though both
now live in London.
As a child Gorky painted with her father in his studio, where he
let her dabble on the back of his canvases. He showed her books
with illustrations by his favourite artists, Edward Lear's nonsense
poems and Gustave Dore's drawings for The Divine Comedy. Now her own
light-filled studio dominates the heart of the house. It's not cut-off
and sacrosanct, as one might expect, but at the centre of operations:
a thoroughfare to several bedrooms.
Her paintings of Italy express a love of its landscape, yet she claims
she could live anywhere. "I do love Italian Renaissance art and living
in this countryside is just like inhabiting the background of one of
those paintings. My favourites are Paolo Uccello, Cosmè Tura and Carlo
Crivelli and I can see their work easily in the museums and churches
here. However, I feel I have an imaginary internal landscape that
could be triggered off by catalysts in many different places."
"I couldn't say I'm Armenian, American, British or Italian," says
Gorky. "I don't feel a loss from not belonging to one country because
I'm part of an international fellowship of artists that I can tap
into wherever I go."
'The Geometry of Nature', an exhibition of Maro Gorky's paintings at
the Long & Ryle Gallery, London, until April 13, www.longandryle.com
By Fiona MacLeod
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/2fdf2b60-6f5e-11e1-b368-00144feab49a.html#axzz1pynvjA00
March 23, 2012 9:18 pm
Painter Maro Gorky, who left hectic London for Tuscany, talks about
the sense of belonging to a particular country
Maro Gorky with peacocks outside her home in Tuscany
Trying to work out from which country Maro Gorky is expatriate is
a puzzle. For more than four decades the painter and her husband
Matthew Spender, a sculptor, have lived in rural Tuscany, creating
and embellishing their house and garden on a hillside in Chianti
so that it is an elaborate collaboration of their twin arts. "The
Italians certainly consider me English," says Gorky. "Our weird life
to them is so un-Italian. We dress so badly for one, we don't keep
up appearances as they do - we don't have the bella figura." The
Italians, according to Gorky, don't like to show any cracks in the
surface. "Our Anglo-Saxon attitude is quite different."
Gorky's parents came from cultural backgrounds that were poles apart.
Her father, the Armenian abstract expressionist painter Arshile Gorky
(a retrospective of his work took place in 2010 at Tate Modern in
London), emigrated to the US as a young man, having lost his mother
to starvation during the Armenian massacre in Turkey during the first
world war. His early life was one of oppression and hardship. Her
mother was from a well-to-do Bostonian family, with a naval officer
father who had postings all over the world. Their life was one of
comfort and privilege.
When Maro was five, Gorky took his own life and, shortly after, she,
her sister and her mother left the US to live in Positano on Italy's
Amalfi coast. "Mummy was like a character in a Henry James novel,"
says Gorky. "We rented beautiful houses in Italy, Spain, France then
England and met hordes of interesting people. She loved to have a
changing backdrop and a cast of thousands."
One summer, on holiday in Crete, Gorky met Matthew Spender, son of the
poet Stephen Spender, at the home of the neo-Romantic painter John
Craxton. They have been together ever since, even while Gorky went
to study at the Slade School of Fine Art and Matthew read history
at Oxford. "We lived in a beautiful little flat in Percy Street [in
London] that belonged to George Orwell's wife Sonia - George's old
clothes were still in the attic."
In 1968 the couple left England for Italy in search of a new life
in the country. "We needed to escape from our parents in London,"
she says. "Their networks were overpowering ... " Gorky says that
she and her husband were sure, at the time, that anyone in Italy who
worked the soil was a rustic philosopher.
At Avane, their Tuscan farmhouse, almost everything you look at is
made or decorated by Gorky or her husband. There are mad, beaded
chandeliers and lampshades, frescoed walls, painted furniture, and,
of course, Gorky's striking paintings and Spender's serene sculptures.
The couple's daughters, Cosima and Saskia, grew up here, though both
now live in London.
As a child Gorky painted with her father in his studio, where he
let her dabble on the back of his canvases. He showed her books
with illustrations by his favourite artists, Edward Lear's nonsense
poems and Gustave Dore's drawings for The Divine Comedy. Now her own
light-filled studio dominates the heart of the house. It's not cut-off
and sacrosanct, as one might expect, but at the centre of operations:
a thoroughfare to several bedrooms.
Her paintings of Italy express a love of its landscape, yet she claims
she could live anywhere. "I do love Italian Renaissance art and living
in this countryside is just like inhabiting the background of one of
those paintings. My favourites are Paolo Uccello, Cosmè Tura and Carlo
Crivelli and I can see their work easily in the museums and churches
here. However, I feel I have an imaginary internal landscape that
could be triggered off by catalysts in many different places."
"I couldn't say I'm Armenian, American, British or Italian," says
Gorky. "I don't feel a loss from not belonging to one country because
I'm part of an international fellowship of artists that I can tap
into wherever I go."
'The Geometry of Nature', an exhibition of Maro Gorky's paintings at
the Long & Ryle Gallery, London, until April 13, www.longandryle.com