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17 PHILIP GUSTON
Untitled #11 (OpenWashes)
.
Lithograph on cream wove paper, 1966. 519x727 mm; 20
1
/
2
x28
5
/
8
inches, full margins.
Signed, dated and numbered 4/20 in pencil, lower margin. Printed and published by
Hollander’s Workshop Inc., New York, with the blind stamp lower right. A superb
impression of this very scarce, early lithograph.
Born Philip Goldstein to Russian emigré parents in Montreal, Guston (1913-1980)
attended the Los Angeles Manual Arts High School, where he became friends with Jackson
Pollock (both he and Pollock were expelled from that school for a satirical pamphlet they
created). Guston pursued a career in the arts that led him to the Otis Art Institute and a
lifelong friendship with Reuben Kadish. Guston and Kadish toured Mexico in 1935,
meeting Diego Rivera, and by 1936 had arrived in NewYork to work under the Federal
Art Project,WPA. His first solo show at the Midtown Gallery in NewYork in 1947 was
followed by travels to Italy.
When he returned to NewYork in the 1950s, he renewed his friendship with Pollock, as
well as Adolph Gottlieb and Willem de Kooning, and began painting in a looser, more
expressionist style. Guston’s lithographs from the 1960s reflect the imagery of his painting
and drawings from this time; they seem to represent still lifes—like the present work—
drawn with bold, gestural strokes not unlike Pollock’s
Black Paintings
from the early 1950s
(see lots 1-3).
[5,000/8,000]