Born in Montreal, Canada, Philip Guston had a career that vacillated between deeply intense figurative painting and totally abstract painting. He remains well known as one of the leading Abstract Expressionists of the 1950s and 1960s and for his paintings in the last part of his career that combined expressionism and realism. Influences in addition to Abstract Expressionism were paintings by Renaissance Masters, California surrealism and 1930s Mexican muralism.

When Guston was six years old, he moved to Los Angeles with his Russian immigrant parents. In high school, he was a friend of future gestural painter Jackson Pollack, and the two of them got into trouble for circulating a satirical pamphlet and were expel...