Art Styles of Philip Guston

To understand Philip Guston art is to track a series of ruptures. From figuration to abstraction and back again, he repeatedly discarded old styles like worn out shoes. The journey began with murals inspired by Mexican masters José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros. A notorious early work from 1932 – when Guston was just 19 – depicted a Ku Klux Klansman whipping a Black man. The work was destroyed by the LAPD – an early sign of Guston’s readiness to confront America’s darkest truths when others were not.

His work in the 1940s and ’50s aligned him with the New York School and Abstract Expressionism, along with longtime friend Jackson Pollock. Guston’s “classic period” earned him critical success, but he never settled. As the political upheavals of the 1960s mounted, he turned away from abstraction to rediscover figuration – not out of nostalgia, but as a necessary confrontation.

Philip Guston and His Drawings

Philip Guston drawings are more than preparatory sketches; they are foundational to his thinking. From early comic-inspired line work to his scathing Poor Richard series satirising Richard Nixon, Guston’s drawings reflect the evolution of an artist forever in dialogue with his time.

The Poor Richard drawings, created in 1971 but not published until decades later, are biting and surreal: Nixon, Spiro Agnew, and Henry Kissinger reduced to grotesque cartoons. These 73 works – meticulously rendered and deeply political – reveal Guston’s mastery of drawing as a vehicle for satire, critique, and expression.

Throughout his career, drawing remained his constant companion, bridging his youthful love for George Herriman’s Krazy Kat with his mature desire to comment on the world’s violence and absurdity.

Philip Guston’s Abstract Art

Although his abstract phase lasted barely 15 years, Philip Guston abstract paintings remain some of the most celebrated works in American art. Ethereal, atmospheric canvases like Zone (1953) and Dial (1956) seem to float between form and formlessness, their soft hues and rhythmic brushstrokes revealing Guston’s deep engagement with colour, composition, and emotion.

He was profoundly influenced by Renaissance painters like Piero della Francesca, whose serene order and geometry echoed through Guston’s abstracts. Yet even during his peak abstractionist years, he remained suspicious of purity. “I got sick and tired of all that purity,” he famously said. “I wanted to tell stories.”

Artwork of Philip Guston Including Early Guston

The early Philip Guston period – defined by politically charged murals, figuration, and surrealistic compositions – shows an artist already grappling with the ethical demands of image-making. His 1937 painting Bombardment, made in response to the bombing of Guernica, is a chaotic yet structured symphony of limbs and bodies. The violence was not abstract; it was lived, seen, and mourned.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Guston stunned the art world by returning to cartoonish figuration with a vengeance. The 1970 exhibition at Marlborough Gallery unveiled paintings like The Studio, featuring a white-hooded Klansman – part menace, part artist – contemplating his own canvas. The critical backlash was swift and brutal. He sold only one work.

Yet today, these works are seen as the heart of the Philip Guston artwork legacy. In the grotesque, hooded figures, critics now see a searing, unflinching reckoning with America’s historical sins and Guston’s own complicity as a white man, artist, and observer.

His final painting on Nixon, San Clemente (1975), turns the ex-president into a distorted caricature, his foot swollen and stitched after phlebitis surgery. Simultaneously funny and tragic, the work is a signature Guston paradox.

A Lasting Influence

The late paintings, once reviled, now inspire a new generation. Philip Guston artworks are celebrated by artists like Cecily Brown, Dana Schutz, and Glenn Ligon, who recognise in Guston a boldness that transcends time. As his daughter Musa Mayer notes, “He wasn’t trying to be fashionable – he was trying to be honest.”

Today, the exhibition Philip Guston Now offers a comprehensive view of a career that defies categorisation. Visitors can witness firsthand how Guston evolved – from early figuration to abstraction, then back to a raw, personal style of painting that dared to say what others would not.

From the ruins of a destroyed mural in Los Angeles to the halls of major museums, Philip Guston art has endured. It remains as challenging and essential as ever.