The Return

Style/Movement: Abstract Expressionism, Neo-Expressionist, 20th Century

Presented by the Friends of the Tate Gallery 1959

T00252

Guston was an important Abstract Expressionist painter in the 1950s, who controversially returned to figurative work in the late 1960s. His early abstract paintings were composed of shimmering combinations of short vertical and horizontal brush strokes in pinks, reds and blues. Discussing The Return, Guston said that he saw the forms in the picture as being like figures who had been away for some time and who were now returning - jostling each other a little as they came.
(From the display caption July 2008)