Exhibition by American Master Philip Guston Opens at the Phillips Collection

WASHINGTON, DC.- This winter, The Phillips Collection showcases the work of modern master Philip Guston (1913–1980). The exhibition shines a spotlight on a pivotal moment in the artist’s illustrious career, revealing the evolution of his personal aesthetic. The exhibition open on Feb. 12, 2011, and remain on view through May 15.

“From acquiring Guston’s powerfully abstract Native’s Return in 1958 to exhibiting his most recent works on paper in 1981, the Phillips has a long history of supporting this complex artist’s periods of exploration and breakthrough,” said Dorothy Kosinski, director of The Phillips Collection. “This exhibition focuses on an important moment of transition in Guston’s career.”

PHILIP GUSTON, ROMA
From the films of Federico Fellini to the vestiges of ancient Rome and the works of Italian masters, Philip Guston drew inspiration throughout his career from Italian art and culture. This exhibition features 39 paintings from the early 1970s that Guston created during his tenure as artist-in-residence at the American Academy in Rome. It marks the first time that the work has been gathered together and displayed, and The Phillips Collection is the only U.S. venue.

One of the most celebrated exponents of the New York School, Guston was, with Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Willem de Kooning, one of the pioneers of abstract expressionism. Guston, who had been a fellow at the American Academy in Rome in 1949, took refuge there as artist-in-residence in the autumn of 1970. An exhibition of his newest paintings, daring to reintroduce figural form and narrative into the reigning abstract expressionist mode, opened at the Marlborough Gallery in New York to scathing reviews from most of the art establishment.

It was during this tumultuous period that Guston painted the Roma series, experimenting with his newly invented language of isolated figural images, challenging himself to draw inspiration from his environment, not just his imagination. For Guston, Rome was magical—a fertile place where he could meditate on art and escape the pressures of the contemporary art world in New York. Inspired by the paintings of Italian heroes like the Renaissance master Piero della Francesca, as well as the modernists Giorgio Morandi and Giorgio de Chirico, Guston combined a nostalgia for the past with recognizable objects from the Italian landscape.

Saturated in a palette of deep pinks and salmon that recall the city’s sun-drenched surfaces, the Roma series embraces figurative painting in its most rudimentary form. As Guston once said, “I imagine wanting to paint as a cave man would…I should like to paint like a man who has never seen a painting.” The series allowed Guston to develop a vocabulary of pared down forms organized into unconventional narrative systems that ultimately provoked new directions in his late paintings. The sophisticated dialogue between stylistic considerations, political ideas, and autobiographical detail created multiple layers of meaning behind seemingly crude cartoon-like imagery.

Guston, born in 1913 in Montreal, moved with his family to Los Angeles in 1919. Interested in art, he was encouraged by his mother to take a correspondence course in cartooning. He attended Manual Arts High School, where he became friends with Jackson Pollock, a fellow student. After he and Pollock were expelled from school for distributing satirical pamphlets, Guston independently pursued his interest in art, including comics, as well as delving into various philosophical theories. He was largely a self-taught artist.

In the winter of 1935–1936, Guston moved to New York, where he worked on murals for the Works Progress Administration on their Federal Art Project. He also combined teaching with his painting career and was, at various times, a member of the faculties of Yale and Columbia Universities and the University of Iowa. From 1973 until his death in 1980 he taught at Boston University.

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