Philip Guston

de Karen Lang, Lena Fritsch

Philip Guston (1913-1980) was an internationally acclaimed American artist whose response to the political and social tumult of the post-war decades resulted in a prolific artistic output. Over the course of his career, his style transformed from figuration to abstraction to figuration.0Born Phillip Goldstein, the artist began drawing incessantly at the age of 12. Aware of antisemitism, he changed his name in 1935, the year he moved to New York. After producing award-winning murals in a 'realist' style for President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration (WPA) in the 1930s and early 1940s, Guston embraced the painting trend of Abstract Expressionism. The upheavals of the 1960s - civil rights protests, brutal state violence, race riots - made him question the relevance of gestural abstraction, however, and his drawing explored the new figuration for which he is best known.0This exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum, curated by Professor Karen Lang with Dr Lena Fritsch, is the first solo show of Guston's work in Oxford.00Exhibition: Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK (23.11.2019-08.03.2020).