In 1930 Gorky moved into a large studio at 36 Union Square, and, was included in the MoMA exhibition, “An Exhibition of Work of 46 Painters and Sculptors Under 35”. By 1931 he began showing with the Downtown Gallery and Mrs. John D Rockefeller acquired a Cezannesque still life painting made 2 years earlier. In an evaluation of Stuart Davis’s work for the magazine, “Creative Art”, Gorky wrote, “The Twentieth Century— what intensity, what activity, what restless nervous energy! Has there in six centuries been better art than Cubism? No.” By Autumn he’d begun his expansive Nighttime, Enigma, and Nostaglia series of over 50 variations on the theme continuing through the mid 1930s.

Head, painted within those years shares form and content with several works from the series with biomorphic forms and references to observed heads in profile and single eyes. It shares compositional elements with Head, a 1934-35 canvas with geometric shapes painted in flat greys, reds, yellows, and white outlined in heavy black lines. Organization, 1933-36, at the National Gallery of Art is also composed of strong red and yellow shapes, as is Blue Figure in a Chair, 1931; and Harmony,1934. Still Life c 1930-31, includes a disembodied eye. This approach to structure through strong color-shapes continues with the Federal Art Project murals Gorky was hired to paint for the Newark Airport and the New York World’s Fair. Head exemplifies Arshile Gorky’s early engagement with the language of Modernism and his deep dialogue with the work of the European avant- garde. Strongly influenced by Pablo Picasso’s deconstructed approach to the human figure, the painting presents a uniquely personal interpretation of the human head. The composition flattens and simplifies facial features —the forehead and nose merge into a single, sculptural form, while a small indentation suggests an open mouth. A stylized, almond-shaped eye, reminiscent of Armenian wall paintings and illuminated manuscripts, subtly evoke Gorky’s cultural heritage.

The spatial setting remains ambiguous: a faint horizon line implies an interior environment, perhaps a red carpeted surface viewed from above. This tension between perspective and flatness destabilizes the viewer’s sense of orientation, inviting multiple readings of the figure’s position in space. The paint, applied thickly and with confidence, reflects the tactile, expressive quality characteristic of Gorky’s work from this period.

Hayden Herrera has described Head as a semi-abstract reinterpretation of the human form, in which organic and mechanical elements intertwine to convey psychological tension and transformation. The limited palette of black, white, and the three primary colors underscores the painting’s formal restraint and compositional clarity.

Influenced by both Picasso—particularly his fragmentation of form—and Joan Miró’s Surrealist automatism, Gorky used this work to explore the intersection of conscious design and subconscious emergence. The result is a powerful metaphor for identity, displacement, and emotional dislocation—an expression of the artist’s own experience as an exile and survivor of the Armenian genocide.

Technically, Head demonstrates Gorky’s meticulous draftsmanship and his commitment to refining contours and textures with near-academic precision, even as his imagery moved toward abstraction. As such, the painting stands as a pivotal work bridging his early figurative studies and the biomorphic abstractions of his mature style, such as Garden in Sochi.