Roma

Days after the opening of his controversial exhibition at Marlborough Gallery, New York, in October 1970, the artist and his wife, Musa, sailed for Europe where Guston was to spend nine months as artist in residence at the American Academy in Rome. This welcome respite from the intensity of his New York life was also a warm reminder of the pleasant time he had spent there in residence from 1948–49, and he returned to many of his favorite ruins and public gardens, rendering them in dozens of small scale paintings on paper. The menacing hooded figures who had overwhelmed the viewers at Marlborough—speaking so bluntly to the deep scourge of racial violence that still stalks this country’s streets—now seemed somewhat subdued, surrounded by the piles of ancient stones and ruined monuments of the Roman cityscape.