Paintings on a European Vacation

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Installation view of one of the six galleries dedicated to a traveling exhibition of works from the Phillips’s permanent collection at the Palazzo delle Eposizioni in Rome. Photo courtesy Palaexpo

Last month, a number of works from the Phillips’s permanent collection found themselves in a new setting at the Palazzo delle Eposizioni in Rome. The exhibition will be on view through February 14, 2016, before heading to Barcelona.

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Installation view of the gallery just opposite the above picture. Photo courtesy Palaexpo

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Phillips Curator Susan Behrends Frank snapped this photo of the condition reporting as a final check before this work gets installed in the galleries. Photo courtesy The Phillips Collection

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(left) The facade of the Palazzo delle Eposizioni (right) line out the door on opening night. Photos courtesy Palaexpo

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Opening night at the Palazzo delle Eposizioni. Photo courtesy Palaexpo

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(left) Phillips Curator Susan Behrends Frank discusses the exhibition with press. Photo courtesy Palaexpo (right) the exhibition makes a splash in the news after the opening. Photo courtesy The Phillips Collection

An American Watermark in Roma

Detail, Cerveteri, 1971-1972, Oil on paper mounted on panel, 58.4 x 73.7 cm; Private Collection, California.

Dismayed by the critical response to his Marlborough Gallery exhibition in New York, Philip Guston did not bring any art supplies with him when he arrived for a six month sojourn as artist-in-residence at the American Academy in Rome. It was several months before he regained the creative energy necessary to embark on the Roma series, and he purchased his art supplies within walking distance of where he was staying. Guston selected Fabriano paper, made in Italy, as the support for most of the Roma paintings.

However Guston’s Cerveteri, which depicts an Italian hill town, is dated 1971-1972 and has a Strathmore watermark, identifying it as an American-made paper. Might Guston have made this work after he returned to his studio in Woodstock, New York in May 1971, demonstrating his continuing preoccupation with themes he explored in the Roma series, as curator Peter Benson Miller proposed ?

Karen Schneider, Librarian