One of America’s greatest modern painters, Philip Guston (1913–1980) defies easy categorization. His winding 50-year career, in which sensitive abstractions gave way to large, cartoonlike canvases populated by lumpy, sometimes tortured figures and mysterious personal symbols, has excited both admiration and controversy.

This major exhibition—organized by the MFA; the National Gallery of Art, Washington; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and Tate Modern, London—is the first retrospective of Guston’s work in nearly 20 years. The selection of approximately 90 paintings and 30 drawings from public and private collections features well-known works as well as others that have rarely been seen. Highlights include paintings from the 1930s that have never been on public view; the largest reunion of paintings from Guston’s groundbreaking Marlborough Gallery show in 1970; a dazzling array of small panel paintings made from 1968 to 1972 as Guston developed his new vocabulary of hooded heads, books, bricks, and shoes; and a powerful selection of large, often apocalyptic paintings of the later 1970s that form the artist’s last major artistic statement.