Philip Guston

Philip Guston (1913–1980) was born in Canada and moved to California as a child. He left for New York City in 1936, where he worked on the WPA as a mural painter. Returning to easel painting in 1939, he held his first solo exhibition at the Midtown Gallery in 1945 and went on to become one of the foremost members of the Abstract Expressionist movement. In the late 1960s Guston’s work again took a new turn, and for the remainder of his life he worked in the distinctive figurative manner for which he is now best known. Significant groups of his paintings are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Tate Gallery in London.