For over 50 years, artist Philip Guston restlessly made paintings and drawings that captured the anxious and turbulent world he was witnessing.
Born in Canada to a Jewish immigrant family, he grew up in the US and eventually became one of the most celebrated abstract painters of the 1950s and 1960s, alongside Mark Rothko and his childhood friend Jackson Pollock.
His early work included murals and paintings addressing racism in America and wars abroad. During the social and political upheavals of the late 1960s, Guston grew critical of abstraction, and began producing large-scale paintings that feature comic-like figures, some in white hoods representing evil and the everyday perpetrators of racism. These paintings and those that followed established Guston as one of the most influential painters of the late 20th century.
Guston was a complex artist who took inspiration from the nightmarish world around him to create new and surprising imagery. This exhibition explores how his paintings bridged the personal and the political, the abstract and the figurative, the humorous and the tragic.
Philip Guston is the first major retrospective on the artist in the UK in nearly 20 years.
The exhibition is co-organised by Tate Modern, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Philip Guston Female Nude with Easel 1935 Promised gift of Musa Guston Mayer to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York © The Estate of Philip Guston,
courtesy Hauser & Wirth
Philip Guston If This Be Not I 1945 Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum. University purchase, Kende Sale Fund, 1945 © The Estate of Philip Guston, courtesy Hauser & Wirth
Philip Guston Dial 1956 Whitney Museum of American Art (New York, USA) © The Estate of Philip Guston, courtesy Hauser & Wirth
Philip Guston Sleeping 1977 Promised gift of Musa Guston Mayer to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York © The Estate of Philip Guston, courtesy Hauser & Wirth
Philip Guston Legend 1977 Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (Houston, USA) © The Estate of Philip Guston, courtesy Hauser & Wirth
Philip Guston The Ladder 1978 National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC, USA) © The Estate of Philip Guston, courtesy Hauser & Wirth
The audio guide can be added to your basket online or bought in the gallery at our desk.
Audio guides cost £5 and are available in English only.
Find out more about the Philip Guston exhibtion with our exhibition guide.
Need a bigger font size of the exhibition guide? Download the large print guide [0.41MB]
All Tate Modern entrances are step-free. You can enter via the Turbine Hall and into the Natalie Bell Building on Holland Street, or into the Blavatnik Building on Sumner Street.
There are lifts to every floor of the Blavatnik and Natalie Bell buildings. Alternatively you can take the stairs.
- Fully accessible toilets are located on every floor on the concourses.
- A quiet room is available to use in the Natalie Bell Building on Level 4.
- Ear defenders can be borrowed from the Ticket desks.
To help plan your visit to Tate Modern, have a look at our visual story. It includes photographs and information about what you can expect from a visit to the gallery.
For more information before your visit:
- Email hello@tate.org.uk
- Call +44 (0)20 7887 8888 (daily 09.45–18.00)
