Philip Guston, Gladiators, 1940
From MoMA:
Guston painted Gladiators in a social-realist style favored by many left-leaning artists in the 1930s, a style that reflected in part the political and aesthetic influence of the Mexican muralist movement led by Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros. At the time he painted Gladiators, Guston was painting murals in New York as part of a Works Progress Administration (WPA) program. The theme of fighting children seen here is reworked from Work and Play, a mural the artist painted in Long Island City, New York.








