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On 9 November Christie’s will offer Armenian-American artist Arshile Gorky’s Charred Beloved I (1946) from the collection of David Geffen as part of the 20th Century Evening Sale in New York, the auction house reports.

Marked by bold biomorphic forms at once suggestive and enigmatic, the canvas captures a pivotal moment at which, through great personal trial, the artist came into his defining style. Widely recognised as the last Surrealist and a proto-Abstract Expressionist, Gorky paved the way for a new American artform.

First exhibited in 1953 at New York’s Sidney Janis Gallery, the canvas has since appeared in major museum shows at the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim. One of the related canvases, Charred Beloved II, is held in the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa.

The 1946 fire was a devastating blow, but it was not the first time Gorky was forced to start anew. The artist was a survivor of the Armenian genocide of 1915, and he emigrated to the United States as a teenage refugee in 1920.