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The Murals of Philip Guston


Philip Guston Mural painting 1934 Early Mail Service and Construction of the Railroad, 1938
Early Mail Service and Construction of the Railroad, 1938


If you were lucky enough to visit the Philip Guston exhibition at the Tate in London earlier this year, you may have learnt that early in his career Guston worked on several mural projects. Even with our biassed focus on surface art at SUPERFICIAL, some of our team managed to miss this in the exhibition, so we thought we would explore Guston’s mural artwork a little further. By doing so, the politics and power of murals is brought to the forefront. 


Guston was inspired by the work of Mexican muralists including David Alfaro Siqueiros, Diego Rivera, and Orozco. Murals combined surfaces and the social agenda and he became aware of the Mexican mural movement in 1929 when reading the January issue of Creative Art  magazine. Whilst he is more well-known for his abstract expressionism and later figurative work, Guston cut his teeth painting murals in the 1930s.


In 1932 Guston and some friends painted murals for a John Reed Club (Communist clubs started in New York that encouraged artists to drop the notion of ‘art for art’s sake’) which focussed on the misjustice of the Scottsboro Boys, nine black youths who were sentenced to death having been wrongly accused of committing rape in Alabama in 1932. The murals depicted violence and misjustice that defined the case. Guston is thought to have painted a harrowing black man being whipped by a Ku Klux Klansman - Klansmen becoming motifs in his art later in his career (especially from 1969) as he explored ‘what would it be like to be evil?’. The LAPD ‘red squad’ raided the club and destroyed several of the murals, shooting out elements of the completed works.



WPA Building, Maintaining America's Skills, created between 1935 and 1945 Phillip Guston Mural painting
WPA Building, Maintaining America's Skills, created between 1935 and 1945

In 1934, he worked with Reuben Kadish on a mural at the Frank Wiggins Trade School depicting trade and craft history from the Egyptian period to the present. Guston also worked with Kadish and Sande Pollock on a moveable mural for the Worker’s School (a Marxist educational organization). Later in the year, the famous Mexican Muralist David Siqueiros got Guston and Kadish to help do a mural in a converted baroque palace in Morelia, Mexico which depicted radical politics on a large wall in ‘The Struggle against Terrorism’ – it took them around 180 days to complete.


In 1936 Guston and Kadish painted murals for a tuberculosis sanatorium in Duarte, California which did not depict such political themes. He then went on to join the Federal Arts Project (FAP) where he became a skilled muralist painting inspirational murals on public buildings alongside 319 other Southern Californian artists. The FAP was launched as part of Roosevelt’s New Deal Program that sought to buoy public morale through the creation of murals in American Cities during the Depression, meanwhile creating jobs for artists.

In 1938, having moved to New York and failed to win several mural commissions, Guston works for 246 days on completing the mural ‘Early Mail and the Construction of the Railroad’ for the post office in Commerce, Georgia.


In 1939 he painted Queensbridge Houses Community Centre mural using casein resin emulsion. The work was titled ‘Work and Play’. Works for the FAP required adherance to client demands, limiting the artistic interpretation of briefs as can be seen in the contrast between initial studies and the final works and the contrast between Guston’s mural work and his private canvasses.  In this year, he also completed a mural for the exterior of the entrance to the Worker’s Progress Association (WAP) Building at the World’s Fair in Queens titled ‘Maintaining America’s Skills or Work the American Way’ – he used chlorinated rubber paint.  This mural won the visitors’ vote for the best outdoor mural, but was destroyed when the fair closed in 1940.


In 1940, Guston won a national competition with his wife Musa to decorate the interiors of C-3 Class steamships. Guston’s works that won included an oil-on-canvas and two sandblasted-glass panels. The works were lost when the ships were retrofitted for use in World War II.



Reconstruction and the Wellbeing of the Family, 1942/installed 1943, oil on canvas adhered to wood, Commissioned through the Section of Fine Arts, 1934–1943, Fine Arts Collection, U.S. General Services Administration Philip Guston mural painting
Reconstruction and the Wellbeing of the Family, 1942/installed 1943, oil on canvas adhered to wood, Commissioned through the Section of Fine Arts, 1934–1943, Fine Arts Collection, U.S. General Services Administration


Towards the end of 1941, Guston expressed his weariness for mural painting, quit the WPA Art Project and moved to Woodstock, a more rural town in the Catskills of New York, to pursue his personal painting and creative practice. With his wife he completed murals for the Forestry building in Laconia, New Hampshire – his work focuses on loggers in ‘New Hampshire Pulpwood Logging’. Later this year, he sits on a board to select a post office mural for San Francisco. He also won the commission for a mural on the stage of the new Social Security Board headquarters in Washington (which can still be seen today) which he completed in 1943. It is called ‘Reconstruction and Well-being of the Family’.


In 1942, Guston worked with the State University of Iowa to supervise a War Art Workshop mural class. As part of this he created a mural with his class for the sports hall at Camp Dodge in Des Moines. He also completed a mural for the Naval Air Force as a teaching tool in celestial navigation. Both of these works have been lost.


In 1950, Harvard Arnason puts on a solo show of Guston including several photographs of his mural artwork at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.



Philip Guston and Reuben Kadish, “Physical Growth of Man” (Detail) (1936) Philip Guston mural painting
Philip Guston and Reuben Kadish, “Physical Growth of Man” (Detail) (1936)


In 1965 Guston was interviewed by the Archives of American art in Washington about his mural work for the WPA. In the interview he states of mural painting that ‘it was [his] education… practically all of the best painters of my generation developed on the projects’.

This quote highlights the formative role mural painting played in Guston’s early career. There was ample funding and opportunity for doing such work in 1930s America, something which was then dramatically reduced. Through the different works we can explore the different political and social functions that mural art played. Many of his mural works were collaborative – highlighting the importance of artistic partnerships and alliances in his career.


The themes and depictions of the murals are interesting to consider not only for what they reveal about government funded project aspirations, but also what they can highlight about Guston’s interpretations of the matter at hand - clues and early developments of themes and motifs he would go on to develop can also be found if you look closely.

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