Guston made some of his most lyrical paintings in the early 1950s, including this work. He built compositions such as #5, seen here, using short, taut brushstrokes that coalesce at the center and disperse as they reach the margins. The resulting works appear both dense and atmospheric, like air suffused with particulate matter. Guston described them as "[v]ery heavily painted, very much overpainted and erased, covered up, repainted, so that a lot of the brush marks are simply erasures."
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Artwork Details
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Title:#5
Artist:Philip Guston (American (born Canada), Montreal 1913–1980 Woodstock, New York)
Date:1952
Medium:Oil on canvas
Dimensions:46 × 40 in. (116.8 × 101.6 cm)
Classification:Paintings
Credit Line:Gift of Mrs. Lawrence Sophian, 1990
Accession Number:1990.340
Inscription: Inscribed (on verso): Philip Guston/ 51 W 10 St/N.Y.C.; #5/1952
Mrs. Lawrence Sophian, New York (by 1960–90; owned jointly with MMA 1990–98; her gift to MMA)
New York. Egan Gallery. "Philip Guston: Paintings and Drawings," January 12–February 7, 1953, no catalogue.
Venice. U.S.A. Pavilion. "XXX Biennale internazionale d’arte. Quattro Artisti Americani: Guston, Hofmann, Kline, Roszak," June 18–October 16, 1960, no. 1 (as "Pittura V [Painting #5]," lent by Sig.ra Lawrence Sophian, Riverside, Connecticut).
Montpellier. Musée Fabre. "Abstractions Américaines, 1940–1960," July 3–October 3, 1999, no. 11 (as "Painting Number Five").
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. "Philip Guston Retrospective," March 30–June 8, 2003, no. 30 (as "Painting No. 5").
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. "Philip Guston Retrospective," June 28–September 27, 2003, no. 30.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Philip Guston Retrospective," October 28, 2003–January 4, 2004, no. 30.
London. Royal Academy of Arts. "Philip Guston Retrospective," January 24–April 12, 2004, no. 30.
New York. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. "The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860–1989," January 30–April 19, 2009 (p. 151).
Paul Brach. "Affirmation." Art Digest 27 (January 15, 1953), p. 13, calls it "Number 5".
Dore Ashton. Philip Guston. New York, 1960, ill. following p. 18, calls it "No. 5".
Amélie Gastaut inAbstractions Américaines, 1940–1960. Exh. cat., Musée Fabre, Montpellier. Paris, 1999, pp. 62–63, no. 11, ill. (color), notes that this painting belongs to a series of ten executed during the summer of 1952.
Daniel Kunitz. "The Three Faces of Philip Guston." nysun.com. December 30, 2003, calls it "Painting No. 5".
Raphael Rubinstein. "Philip Guston: Some Thoughts." Art in America 92 (March 2004), ill. p. 86 (color).
Bert Winther-Tamaki in Alexandra Munroe. The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860–1989. Exh. cat., Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. New York, 2009, p. 151.
Robert Storr. Philip Guston: A Life Spent Painting. London, 2020, p. 52, fig. 39 (color).
Sarah Roberts and Katy Siegel, ed. Joan Mitchell. Exh. cat., San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. San Francisco, 2020, p. 34, no. 5, ill. p. 50 (color).
Barry Schwabsky. "Philip Guston's Peculiar History Lesson." thenation.com. April 12, 2021.
Robin Pogrebin. "Met to Receive Trove of Philip Guston's Art." New York Times (December 15, 2022), p. C6.
The Guston Foundation, ed. Catalogue Raisonné. Online resource [gustoncrllc.org/home/catalogue_raisonne], 2024 (accessed), no. P52.007, ill. (color).
Philip Guston (American (born Canada), Montreal 1913–1980 Woodstock, New York)
1950
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