Details

Title

Painter

Artist/Maker

Philip Guston (American, born Canada, 1913–1980)

Date

1959

Medium

Oil on canvas

Dimensions

65 x 69 inches

Credit

Purchase with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts

Accession #

74.118

Location

Currently not on view

An Abstract Expressionist during the 1950s and 1960s, Philip Guston considered his paintings to be records of spontaneous gesture. In The Painter a dark, imposing form seems to imply both an easel and a figure in motion; the title suggests that this animated form represents the artist himself, involved in passionate, improvisational painting. The figure exemplifies the words of Harold Rosenberg, a critic contemporary with the Abstract Expressionists: “A painting that is an act is inseparable from the biography of the artist. . . . The new painting has broken down every distinction between art and life.”

Image Copyright

© The Estate of Philip Guston, courtesy Hauser & Wirth, New York.

More from this Artist