PHILIP GUSTON
Biographical Information
Primarily self-taught as an artist, Guston (1913-1980) was an accomplished cartoonist by age 15. He attended Otis Art Institute briefly in 1930. More significant to his development, at about the same time he met artist and teacher Lorser Feitelson who introduced him to Renaissance and contemporary European art. From 1932-1941 he painted murals in Mexico, New York, Georgia, California, and New Hampshire, working on government projects from 1935-1940. He did New Deal murals in the post office in Commerce, Georgia, and in what was then the Social Security Building in Washington, D.C. (it is now Health and Human Services). In 1939 he won first prize in a contest sponsored by the American Society of Mural Painters for a mural he did for the WPA building at the New York World's Fair that year. In 1940 he resigned from WPA work, choosing to concentrate instead on easel paintings. Guston was a leading figure in the birth of Abstract Expressionism in the early 1950s.
Mural Credits
Figures in an Italian Setting (Untitled) (with Ruben Kadish)
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