Image

Philip Guston

Driving Around
Now On View Recent Acquisition

Description

Maker

Philip Guston (American, 1913–1980

Title

Driving Around

Year

1970

Medium

Materials/Techniques

Techniques

Dimensions

25.4 x 30.5 cm (10 x 12 inches)

Signature / Inscription / Marks

Signature

Credit / Object Number

Credit

Gift of Jolie Stahl

Object Number

2024.19.45

Type

Exhibition History

Exhibition History

Art and Design from 1900 to Now
Jun 04, 2022 – Sep 01, 2026

Label copy

This painting is one of many depictions artist Philip Guston made of members of the Ku Klux Klan, a white supremacist hate group that has been active in the US since the end of the Civil War. Guston presents these figures in a cartoonish way, holding their acts in contempt while recognizing their sinister presence in the American landscape.

In the 1970s, when Jolie Stahl was living and working in a studio in Boston, she met Guston, who was teaching at Boston University. Years later, Stahl acquired this painting. It joins another work by Guston in the RISD Museum collection, The Road, which was donated in 1992 by Guston’s widow, Musa. 

–Dominic Molon, Richard Brown Baker Curator of Contemporary Art

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Tombstone

Philip Guston (American, 1913–1980
b. in Montreal, Canada)
Driving Around, 1970
Oil on Masonite
25.4 x 30.5 cm (10 x 12 inches)
Gift of Jolie Stahl 2024.19.45

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