Philip Guston was one of the most important painters of the New York School, which also numbered many of the Abstract Expressionists, such as Jackson Pollock and Willem De Kooning. Born Philip Goldstein in Montreal, Canada in 1913, Guston, with his family, moved to Los Angeles as a child. He began painting at the age of 14, and was self taught, apart from a one-year scholarship at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles.

In 1936, Guston moved to New York, and worked as an artist under the WPA scheme.

In the 1950's, Guston achieved success as part of the Abstract Expressionist movement, and made paintings that were purely abstract. Later in his career, he made a major shift away from abstraction and began painting representational subjects, largely figures, the objects found in his studio (easels, brushes, tins for example) and interiors, often lit with a single, cartoon-like light bulb.

He became a Professor of Art at St Louis.

Guston is best known for these late existential and lugubrious paintings, which at the time of his death in 1980 reached a wide audience, and brought him to the attention of many painters, and many imitators.