PHILIP GUSTON - Roma

PHILIP GUSTON (1913-1980)

Once celebrated as a leading member of the New York School, Philip Guston (1913 1980) is now even better known for his influential, late figurative paintings. This publication reunites paintings from the Roma series, completed during the artist s residency at the American Academy in Rome in 1970 71 and which testifies to his dialogue with Italian art and culture. Inspired since his youth by masters of the Italian Renaissance, Guston s lifelong admiration for Italy continued with his love of Giorgio de Chirico, Italian films in particular those by Federico Fellini Roman ruins, antique sculptural fragments, Italian gardens, and the country s landscape and people. Diary entries recount intellectual exchanges at the American Academy; pilgrimages to Venice, Arezzo, Sicily, and Orvieto; and Guston s observations of the vibrant international cultural community in Rome.

FROM THE BOOK

"The Roma series provides insight into this crucial moment in Guston’s career and testifies to his dialogue with Italian art and culture. Elemental forms convey his tragic sensibility and formal inventiveness, both of which were central to what the art critic Harold Rosenberg called the painter’s 'liberation from detachment.' Inspired since his youth by masters of Italian Renaissance, Guston’s lifelong admiration for Italy continued with his love of de Chirico, Italian films, especially Fellini, antique ruins, sculptural fragments, formal gardens and the Italian people."

Peter Benson Miller, excerpted from Philip Guston: Roma.