The Guston Foundation

Home
United States
San Francisco, CA
The Guston Foundation

Directions Website Contact the organization

Account monitored by The Guston Foundation whose mission is to further the legacy of Philip Guston.

10/02/2026

“I think what made a kind of, not a unity, but a kind of a group roughly that met in each other’s studios or in bars was a kind of dissatisfaction with what had been going on previously, or what each of us had been doing previously.” To listen to the rest of Philip Guston’s reaction to the term “abstract expressionism” as part of a lecture at Boston University School of Fine and Applied Arts, 1966, visit the link in our bio.

The Writing and Talks section of philipguston.org features audio recordings and transcriptions from Guston’s talks and lectures. He was widely recognized as an inspiring and dedicated teacher, once described by a colleague as a “zealot possessed by art,” offering insights into art, literature, and philosophy.

Left to right: Mark Rothko (standing), Franz Kline, Sidney Janis (seated), Williem de Kooning (standing), and Philip Guston (seated), 1956, in front of de Kooning’s Easter Monday (1955-56). Courtesy Sidney Janis Gallery, NY.

09/22/2026

Philip Guston’s “Transition” is currently on view at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.

From their website: “‘Transition’ shows Guston's hand reaching over the edge of a stretched canvas. A tiny red doorway suggests movement from one place to another, while the hands of the clock point to the artist's canvas and, above, to a heap of shoes—a possible reference to the N**i atrocities of the Holocaust. A mix of allegorical and personal references, the painting is at once comic and disturbing.”

Philip Guston, Transition, 1975. Oil on canvas; 66 × 80½ in. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Musa Guston

09/17/2026

“The power of the book is the opportunity to have the woman’s perspective about a life with a renowned male artist, especially from that period of time.” —’s Dian Parker on the recently-published book, “Life With P.”

Read an interview with Musa Mayer about the book of her mother’s writings, “Life with P. Journals, 1966–1976”: https://brooklynrail.org/2026/09/books/musa-mayer-with-dian-parker

The book covers the years that her mother, Musa McKim Guston and her father, Philip Guston, lived at their home in Woodstock, New York, as well as their travels to Italy, Greece, and Mexico. Included in the book, along with the journals, are a few of her mother’s poems, some illustrated by Philip, along with her drawings, photographs, and postcards from their travels.

Philip and Musa in Florence, Italy, 1970. The Estate of Philip Guston Archives.

09/02/2026

Philip Guston’s “Cigar,” 1969 is among the works presented in Ogunquit Museum’s ‘American Conversations,’ which examines how artists have contributed to the ongoing dialogue surrounding the idea of “America” over the past 125 years.

Murray Whyte writes in the Boston Sunday Globe: “[Cigar] screams out loud the artist’s visceral complaint with both an art world and social order willfully blind to the systemic inequities of American life.”

“American Conversations” is on view through November 15 in Ogunquit, Maine. More information: https://ogunquitmuseum.org/exhibition/american-conversations/

Image: Hughie Lee-Smith’s “Interval” next to Philip Guston’s “Cigar.”

quitMuseum

08/27/2026

This is Philip Guston’s caricature of his friend, the composer John Cage.

On August 29, 1952, at the Maverick Concert Hall in Woodstock, New York, the pianist David Tudor performed the world premier of Cage’s 4’33”, a piece in 3 movements during which the musician or musicians do NOT play. Musa Guston Mayer remembers attending that performance as a child.

“The piece took the world by storm and is considered to be a masterpiece of minimalist art, Buddhist expression and ego-less creation.” —

This August 29, on the 74th anniversary, Woodstock Artists Association & Museum will present the revolutionary piano piece 4’33”, as they have been doing for the last 16 years. Learn more: https://www.woodstockart.org/event/john-cage-433-6/

Philip Guston, Caricature of John Cage, c. 1955. Ink on paper; Dimensions Unknown | John Cage photograph by Ann Keyvan via Wikimedia Commons

08/05/2026

“During the late 1960s, outward events had made deep incursions in Guston’s thought. They had much to do with the renunciation he announced in the shocking and now legendary exhibition of 1970. Immured in his Woodstock studio, Guston had be- gun to draw and paint grotesques, recognizable things-shoes, cars, junk (which he called "crappola"). and, as he always said, anything at all he saw around.” —Dore Ashton from the introduction “Philip Guston: Collected Writings, Lectures, and Conversations, by Clark Coolidge, page 6, published 2011 by UC Press

Philip Guston, High Heel, 1968. Acrylic on panel; 18 × 20 in. Private Collection London | Untitled (Shoe), 1968. Acrylic on panel; 20 × 18 in. Private Collection, NY | Untitled, 1968. Acrylic on panel; 16½ × 19½ in. Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, Bequest of Musa Guston | Untitled, 1968. Acrylic on panel; 16½ × 19½ in. Collection Unknown | Untitled, 1968. Acrylic on panel; 18 × 20 in. Promised gift of Musa Guston Mayer to The Metropolitan Museum of Art | Untitled (Shoe), 1968. Acrylic on panel; 17⅞ × 20 in. Private Collection | Untitled (Orange Shoe), 1971. Oil on paper; 19½ × 27¾ in. Private Collection

07/28/2026

Philip Guston’s Driving Around, 1970 is currently on view at the RISD Museum of Art in the installation, “Art and Design from 1900 to Now.”

From their website:
“This painting is one of many depictions artist Philip Guston made of members of the Ku Klux Klan, a white supremacist hate group that has been active in the US since the end of the Civil War. Guston presents these figures in a cartoonish way, holding their acts in contempt while recognizing their sinister presence in the American landscape.

In the 1970s, when Jolie Stahl was living and working in a studio in Boston, she met Guston, who was teaching at Boston University. Years later, Stahl acquired this painting. It joins another work by Guston in the RISD Museum collection, The Road, which was donated in 1992 by Guston’s widow, Musa.” –Dominic Molon, Richard Brown Baker Curator of Contemporary Art

Philip Guston, Driving Around, 1969. Oil on panel; 10 × 12 in. Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, Gift of Jolie Stahl; photo via on Instagram | The Road, 1972. Oil on canvas; 51¼ × 118¾ in. Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, Bequest of Musa Guston

06/27/2026

“A painting feels lived-out to me, not painted. That’s why one is changed by painting. In a rare magical moment, I never feel myself to be more than a trusting accomplice. So, the paintings aren’t pictures, but evidences — maybe documents, along the road you have not chosen, but are on nevertheless.” —Philip Guston

Philip Guston was born on this day in 1913 in Montreal, Canada (as Phillip Goldstein), the youngest of seven children. His parents Louis Goldstein and Rachel Ehrenleib were Jewish Russian immigrants from present-day Ukraine who settled in Canada c. 1905.

Our recently-relaunched website features a detailed Chronology section, where readers can explore Guston’s life and work year by year. https://philipguston.org/chronology/the-early-years

06/12/2026

A Philip Guston fan from the Netherlands visited the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, but was disappointed to find that a work in their collection, The Door (1978), was not on view. His strategy of writing to the museum over the past few years has recently been successful—The Door is now on view!

Good to know that art lovers can request that their favorite works from a museum collection be displayed.

From Stedelijk Museum’s post: “'The Door' by Philip Guston 👁️ After his breakthrough in the 1940s, Guston became one of the most important abstract expressionists in New York in the following decade.

The political and social unrest of the late 1960s prompted him to start creating bold paintings. Through a diverse range of imagery of figures and everyday objects, he addressed difficult topics, such as violence, racism, and human shortcomings. Although his vision was met with resistance at the time, Guston is now honored as a fundamental influence on contemporary art.”

Guston’s better-known work, Painting, Smoking, Eating (1973) is currently on view as it often is.

Philip Guston, The Door, 1978. Oil on canvas; 68 × 109 in. Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, acquired with the generous support of the Vereniging Rembrandt and Mrs. Musa Guston, Woodstock, NY, 1983

HASHTAGS

06/04/2026

This month’s issue of features ’s review of the exhibition, Life with P., at Hauser & Wirth’s 18th Street space:

“Philip Guston’s late paintings can be dense, dark, and apocalyptic, but Life with P. shows this period in a different light by setting some selected works from the artist’s last decade in the context of daily life. The exhibition grounds these works in Guston’s deep relationship to his wife Musa McKim, whose newly published journals, including her own drawings and poems, provide context—a quotidian stream of consciousness in which language and vision routinely merge. The show includes four large paintings that address issues related to marriage, but smaller paintings and works on paper predominate…”

The exhibition coincides with the release of a new book by the same title—an illustrated compilation of Musa McKim’s previously unpublished journals from 1966–1976, edited and contextualized by the couple’s daughter, Musa Mayer. On view through July 10, 2026.

Read the full article in The Brooklyn Rail: https://bit.ly/4ocgghh

Installation views, courtesy .

Address

151 3rd St.
San Francisco, CA
94103

Website

http://philipguston.org/

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when The Guston Foundation posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Organization

Send a message to The Guston Foundation:

Want your organization to be the top-listed non profit organization in San Francisco?