BOSTON (mfa.org) — The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA) and the Martin Barooshian Artwork Trust were pleased to announce [on July 21] the MFA’s acquisition of Martin Barooshian’s oil painting “Revelation” (1960), a landmark addition to its permanent collection. Among the earliest works from Barooshian’s mature period, “Revelation” shows his distinctive visual language coming fully into view: a vivid ever-shifting world of biomorphic forms, fantastical figures, symbolic imagery, layered patterns, and bold color. “Revelation” joins 36 Barooshian works on paper already at the MFA, deepening the museum’s commitment to an artist whose full significance is only now receiving the institutional recognition it deserves.
“Revelation” offers a vivid reminder that postwar American art was richer, stranger, and more alive than dominant narratives have long suggested. In place of the scale, gesture, and spectacle of postwar modernism, Barooshian’s visual language is rooted in density, interiority, and a vision of nature as a vital, interconnected force — resisting categorization and proposing a fundamentally different model for American art. Barooshian traced a parallel path that moved fluidly through abstraction, figuration, symbolism, and organic form, shaped by sources ranging from Renaissance and Baroque art to Symbolism, Surrealism, Arshile Gorky, comics, cinema, and the anxieties of the Cold War era.
“Revelation” brings this approach into focus. Rather than literally illustrating the biblical narrative, Barooshian transforms it into a fluid, non-linear cosmos. Within this space, shifting biomorphic forms merge and collide to give shape to themes of apocalypse, judgment, rupture, and renewal in a language unmistakably his own. Lush, buttery passages of painterly richness alternate with intricate patterning on a strategically flattened picture plane, underscoring the compositional complexity of “Revelation” and reflecting Barooshian’s unabashed “more is more” philosophy. “Revelation” shows a master riding a razor’s edge between restraint and excess, precision and chaos.
Michael Russo, curator of the Martin Barooshian Artwork Trust, highlighted the painting’s contrasts: “‘Revelation’ is quintessential Barooshian—a bold, expansive, and dynamic work that’s alive with wild energy, which also invites quiet, intimate engagement and deep personal involvement. We’re delighted that ‘Revelation’ has found a home at the MFA.”
Barooshian (1929–2022) was no outsider. A Boston native, he trained under the influential Karl Zerbe at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, under S.W. Hayter at Atelier 17, and at Atelier Jean Pons in Paris — immersed in the most rigorous artistic traditions of the postwar period. He was at the center of the New York art world, leading the professional workshop at the Pratt Institute Print Center, shaping generations of artists, and counting Willem de Kooning among his friends.
Despite his prominence in the New York art scene, Barooshian resisted its dominant trends. While many of his contemporaries embraced a pure abstraction that rejected history and the human form, Barooshian carved out his own path. By fusing rich international art traditions and history with contemporary American visual culture into a singular, cohesive language, Barooshian kept figures, symbolism, narrative suggestion, and mythic scale alive on the canvas. In doing so, he expanded the creative possibilities of his era, anchoring a visionary, symbolic, and deeply layered style firmly within the story of postwar American art.
