Paul Levy
Mougouch Fielding (*) was born Agnes Magruder in Boston, Massachusetts in
1921. The name “Mougouch,” an Armenian term of endearment (“little
mighty one”), was bestowed by her first husband, the great
Armenian-American abstract expressionist painter Arshile Gorky
(1904-1948).
Her father, John Holmes Magruder II, an American naval
attaché from an East Coast establishment family, took his Bostonian wife
Esther Hosmer, a society beauty, and their family around Europe and
Asia on his various postings. Agnes was at school in Washington, The
Hague and Switzerland. In Shanghai she became interested in the
Communist movement and left, taking a ship across the Pacific, ending up
in Iowa City, hoping to be taught by Grant Wood (the painter of
American Gothic).
