Philip Guston

the long version

"In 1967 Philip Guston (1913-80) left New York City for Woodstock, where--abandoning the Abstract Expressionism of the previous decades--he revisited the figurative imagery of his youth. Cartoonlike in quality, these paintings began to incorporate motifs familiar to him since childhood, from the hooded figures of the Ku Klux Klan to everyday objects such as lightbulbs, shoes and cigarettes. When these paintings were shown for the first time in 1970, they proved highly controversial but soon gained critical recognition and are now widely regarded as some of the most compelling and influential works of the late twentieth century."--Amazon.com.