In the 1950s, Guston achieved success and renown as a first-generation
Abstract Expressionist. During this period his paintings often consisted of blocks and masses of gestural strokes and marks of color floating within the picture plane. These works, with marks often grouped toward the center of the compositions, recall the "plus and minus" compositions by
Piet Mondrian. Guston used a relatively limited palette favoring whites, blacks, greys and reds in these works. This palette remains evident in his later work.
In the late 1960s, Guston became frustrated with
abstraction and began painting representationally again, but in a rather
cartoonish manner. The first exhibition of these new figurative paintings was held in 1970 at the Marlborough Gallery in New York. It received scathing reviews from most of the art establishment (notably from the
New York Times art critic Hilton Kramer who, in an article ridiculed Guston's new style). One of the few who instantly understood the importance of those paintings was the painter
Willem de Kooning who, at the time, said to Guston that they were "about freedom" (cited in Musa Mayer's biography of her father, Night Studio).[
citation needed] As a result of the poor reception of his new figurative paintings, Guston decided to move from New York and settled in Woodstock, far from the art world which had so utterly misunderstood his art...When criticized widely about the impurity of these later paintings, he responded, "There is something ridiculous and miserly in the myth we inherit from
abstract art. That painting is autonomous, pure and for itself, therefore we habitually analyze its ingredients and define its limits. But painting is 'impure'. It is the adjustment of 'impurities' which forces its continuity. We are image-makers and image-ridden. There are no wiggly or straight lines..." In this body of work he created a lexicon of images such as
Klansmen, lightbulbs, shoes, cigarettes, and clocks. Guston is best known for these late
existential and lugubrious paintings
