Philip Guston was born in Montreal to Jewish refugees who fled persecution in Eastern Europe. Growing up primarily in Los Angeles, he took cartooning classes and became high school friends with Jackson Pollock. Guston rose to prominence in the 1950s among other Abstract Expressionist painters before completely rethinking and reinventing his practice to focus on realism. His late works, which incorporated his early cartooning education into his compositions, addressed themes including race, religion, and politics. In San Clemente, 1976, for instance, Guston painted a caricature of Richard Nixon—a pseudo muse of the artist in the 1970s—with an exaggerated red nose and tearful eyes, dragging a swollen and bandaged left foot.

–Philip Batler, from the Glenstone Field Guide