Philip Guston - One-shot-painting

PHILIP GUSTON (1913-1980)
Philip Guston started studying at the Manual Arts High School in Los Angeles and the Otis Art Institute at the age of fifteen. At the latter, from which he was expelled, he met Jackson Pollock, with whom he formed a close friendship. In the early thirties he discovered Mexican mural art through a mural painting which Orozco was making in California and he travelled to Mexico, where he was deeply impressed by the work of Siqueiros. At the end of 1935 he moved to New York, where he made several murals with socio-political themes for the Federal Art Project’s Works Progress Administration. Throughout his life he taught at various American universities. Philip Guston’s early works reflect the influence of mural painting. When Abstract Expressionism began to emerge in New York, Guston initially embraced the movement with its liking for large formats. At that point he plunged into a variety of lyrical abstraction, in which brightly coloured brushstrokes were placed on backgrounds of even, flowing hues. In 1968 his work experienced a radical change, and in the isolation of his studio Guston went back to figuration and began to create canvases of smaller formats, in which the colours darkened and there was a return to his earlier social and political concerns, but now rawer. The move back to figuration led to rejection by the critics and his companions, with the exception of Willem de Kooning. Guston sought isolation in Woodstock. There he continued to develop his personal language and his interpretation of the reality around him, to which he could no longer remain indifferent. The exhibition in 2002 at IVAM consists of thirty works on canvas among which the focus is on those twenty-five works done by Guston without priming, unlike many other paintings, as his daughter, Musa Mayer, relates in the important book Night Studio (1988).
“One-Shot-Paintings” is a loose term used by Guston to characterize a few paintings that were painted in a flash of inspiration or like “lighting bolts”, quickly without adjustments. A record of unusual images that generally came to mind on the point of waking up in the morning, almost like dream images. Then Guston would rush to the studio to get the image down on canvas before losing it. The paintings were done over a period of time. However, individually, each was completed in a single session of rapid painting. These paintings are being shown to the public for the first time, and there will be a selection of paintings to complement this group of more familiar themes such as “Smoking I”, “Flame” etc., as well as a series of drawings based on poems by his wife, Musa McKim. The catalogue reproduces all the works exhibited and includes an essay by the curator of the show, Kosme de Barañano, together with two essays by the poets Fernando Gómez Aguilera and Manuel Padorno.