This painting shows a face simplified to the extreme, with the prominent forehead and nose unified and a dent suggesting an open mouth. The restrained palette is limited to white, black, some bright yellow, vivid red, and darker red. An enigmatic starlike form is painted in white on the black surface surrounding the head and is situated right in front of the mouth. The work echoes Pablo Picasso’s deconstructed renditions of the human body. At the same time, Untitled (Head) mixes this European Modernism with Arshile Gorky’s native Armenian culture. The basic features and almond-shaped eye are not unlike those in ornamented stylized wall paintings, manuscripts, and stone sculptures that the artist could have seen as a child in Armenia. Behind the Modernist surface is the image of an exile expressing his own displacement and estrangement from the Armenian culture to which he still felt connected.