Artist Review - Philip Guston

Philip Guston is probably most famous for his painting, "Painting, Smoking, Eating, Sleeping", and the variants of it, which run into many indeed.

 Painting, Smoking, Eating. (1973)
oil on canvas, Collection Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.

A Canadian by birth (in 1913), he moved from Montreal to California, (the son of Ukranian Jewish immigrants Family name "Goldstein", who escaped the Semitic persecution of Jews from much of the wider Europe prior to the first World War).   Unfortunately, the move from Canada to Los Angeles was a little miscalculated as there was also much hatred fro the Klu Klux Klan in those days.

In terribly sad circumstances, the young Philip Goldstein, (now Guston), at only 10 or 11 years of age, found his Father's hanged body in their shed, whom had apparently committed suicide.

He then begins to draw & paint around the age of 13-14 and later enrols on a correspondence course to Cleveland School of Cartooning. (This was the era of Walt Disney an was no doubt a wonderful escape from reality for the young lad). (Ref; http://www.themorgan.org/sites/default/files/pdf/press/GustonChronology.pdf)

He then has the awful spectre of seeing his older brother loosing his leg to gangrene after a motor cycle accident.  This must have been a deeply scarring time for young Philip.

During his initial formal art training, he meets and befriends Jackson Pollock, with whom he remains good companions (until Pollock's own suicide in the 1950's).

Through the 1930s and 40s he and friend Reuben Kadish (Another american born from immigrant Russians), has many adventures through travelling in Mexico, and no doubt during this time picks up many cultural influences from Mexican / Spanish and European backgrounds.

Finally settling in New York (spending time with Pollock, De-Kooning, Rothko and many others of "the New York School").  It is unclear from my research that he met Arshile Gorky (1904 to 1948), who I believe must have had very similar childhood, parallel immigrant suffering in the US (Gorky was an Armenian Genocide refugee) and also a strong mutual friendship with Jackson Pollock, Willem De-Kooning and others.  Unfortunately, like many others of the New York School, Gorky also committed suicide, (in 1948).

Gladiators (1940) New York (MOMA). www.moma.org