American painter Philip Guston (1913-1980) was a key member of the New York School with a strongly urban point of view. The unique aspect of his career is that he moved from being a successful figurative artist to pure abstraction and then, late in life, returned to figurative art.

Philip Guston was born in 1913 in Montreal, Canada. The youngest of seven children, Philip moved with his family to Los Angeles in 1919. Plagued by financial difficulties and personal conflict, his father committed suicide soon after.

Guston attended Manual Arts High School in Los Angeles and was a classmate of Jackson Pollock. The two became firm friends. In 1930 Guston briefly studied at Otis Art Institute, but soon dropped out. He was largely a self-taught artist.

Between 1934 and 1935 Guston travelled with a friend to Mexico, where he served briefly as an assistant to Mexican mural artist David Siqueiros. He later returned...