Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

With more than 100 illustrations -- approximately 48 in full color -- this innovative series offers a fresh look at the most creative and influential artists of the postwar era. Modern Masters form a perfect reference set for home, school, or library. Each handsomely designed volume presents: - A thorough survey of the artist's life and work - Statements by the artist - An illustrated chapter on technique - Chronology - Lists of exhibitions and public collections - Annotated bibliography - Index

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

This latest in Abbeville's ``Modern Masters Series,'' which is devoted to monographs on individual artists, seems targeted toward lower-division undergraduates. There is a vast literature on Guston, much of it specialized, much of it written in the occult language of modernist art critics. Storr, however, has written a straightforward, narrative biography of Guston's life. It is generously illustrated with reproductions, many in color, of Guston's work that began, as did that of many of his later abstract expressionist peers, with participation in the Federal Art Project of the 1930s. Appendixes include a chronology of Guston's career, a list of exhibitions, a bibliography, and an index.-R.L. Wilson, San Francisco State University

Booklist Review

The latest in Abbeville's laudable Modern Masters series celebrates a painter whose career was one of constant stylistic development. A political muralist in the 1930s, Guston evolved in the 1940s under the influence of Picasso's Guernica, finally turning to full-blown abstract expressionism in the 1950s, becoming one of the most revered and imitated of the New York school. He did not rest there. His abstractions increasingly suggested external forms. After two years spent only drawing, he returned to figuration, painting cartoonlike hooded men and, later, spidery legs with hobnailed-booted feet and heads consisting mostly of furrowed brows, giant eyes, and whiskery cheeks. These figures were engaged in or surrounded by the activities and tools of the painter's life and implied personal political attitudes. Storr touches on these meanings but is more occupied with Guston's metaphysical progress from style to style. Though the text waxes a bit gassy, the reproductions and apparatus of chronology, exhibition list, bibliography, and index are up to the series' high standards. RO. 759.13 Guston, Philip / Painters U.S. Biography [CIP] 86-1030