The Art of Philip Guston

In January 2004 the RA will present the most comprehensive survey ever mounted of the renowned American painter, Philip Guston, and the first major retrospective of his work to be held in the UK. Philip Guston (1913–1980) had been a leading exponent of Abstract Expressionism for almost two decades when he boldly returned to figurative work in the late 1960s. His uncompromising late paintings, which shocked the art world and baffled his admirers, ultimately inspired later generations of artists, and invigorated American painting in the 1970s and 1980s. The exhibition will bring together some 80 works and will include rarely seen drawings and paintings from the artist’s estate and the private collection of his daughter.

Philip Guston was born in Canada of Russian-Jewish émigré parents and moved to California in 1919. He began to paint and draw in 1927, the same year he met Jackson Pollock at High School. He continued his studies at art college in Los Angeles, during which time he became an accomplished draughtsman through careful studying of both Old Master and more contemporary artists. In late 1935, at Pollock’s urging, Guston moved to New York where he became involved in mural painting projects with Pollock, Willem de Kooning and the Mexican Muralists. In the 1930s and 1940s Guston concentrated on figurative work, but in the 1950s he began to paint non-objective canvases, creating abstract works as powerful as his contemporaries, Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman.

Beginning with the early figurative works, which reflect Guston’s wide ranging pictorial influences, including Giorgio de Chirico and Pablo Picasso, the exhibition will include a selection of transitional paintings, which show the artist’s entry into Abstract Expressionism. The exhibition will highlight a major group of Guston’s acclaimed pure abstractions from the 1950s and 1960s. These works, critically acclaimed when first exhibited, have rarely been seen since.

In the late 1960s Guston confounded his critics by returning to figurative subject matter, creating figures of cartoon like simplicity to explore socially conscious subject matter. These late paintings depict cartoonish figures and landscapes, which reflect both Guston’s intense dissatisfaction with himself as an artist, and the world he lived in. Employing images of cigarette smokers, the Klu Klux Klan and Richard Nixon, these large-scale works examined increasingly pessimistic themes concerning the threat of evil, violence and political terror.

The later figurative work was first shown in the artist’s controversial and highly influential 1970 exhibition at the Marlborough Gallery, New York. This series of paintings, which included his symbolic, hooded figures, was of great importance to subsequent generations of artists, including neo-figurative artists such as Anselm Kiefer and Georg Baselitz, and remains a powerful influence on figurative artists working today. Pressetext

The Art of Philip Guston (1913-1980)
Kuratoren: Michael Auping, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth - Norman Rosenthal, RA
Organisation: Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth

Stationen:
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth; San Francisco Museum of Art (bis 28. 09.); Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (27.10.2003 - 04.01.2004)