Philip Guston

Born in Canada to Jewish immigrant parents, Philip Guston grew up in America, emerging as a leading figure of Abstract Expressionism alongside Mark Rothko and his childhood friend Jackson Pollock. Yet Guston was never one to remain comfortable within a single artistic language. By the late 1960s, he had abandoned abstraction in favour of a bold, unsettling figurative style, populated by hooded figures, everyday objects and darkly comic imagery. Confronting racism, violence and the absurdities of human behaviour, Guston created a deeply personal visual language in which humour and tragedy collide. This radical reinvention cemented his place as one of the most influential painters of the twentieth century.

When Philip Guston turned to lithography in the early 1960s, his work was already shifting towards the powerful figurative language that would define his final decade. His remarkable black-and-white lithographs, created shortly before his death in 1980—including East Side, read almost as a visual autobiography. Everyday objects, drawn from the intimacy of his private world, take on an extraordinary vitality through Guston’s wry humour, unmistakable hand and the soft, expressive marks of lithographic crayon.

East Side is in the collection of TATE Britain, MoMa, The Museum of Fine Art, Houston and The National Gallery of Art, Washington. 

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