A rare example of Philip Guston’s early abstract vernacular, ‘Ochre Painting I’ (1951) is representative of the unique colors and variations of abstraction Guston experimented with in the early 1950s and represents a definitive moment in his oeuvre. Abandoning his figurative style for abstraction in the late 1940s, Guston approached the need to get ‘inside’ his work by adapting his proximity and relationship to the canvas. Working very close to the canvas without a predetermined plan, Guston applied paint in short, thick strokes using small brushes and pigments specifically ground to achieve a soft and luminous appearance. In ‘Ochre Painting I’, a subtle, overall grid emerges through the hatched yellow strokes, with three articulated sections of red, gray, and brown—it is ascetic and almost calligraphic in technique. Guston later described this period: ‘You felt as if you were driven into a corner against the wall, with no place to stand, just the place you occupied as if the act of painting was not making a picture…It was as if you had to prove to yourself that truly the act of creation was still possible.’ ‘Ochre Painting I’ was first exhibited at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in Guston’s mid-career retrospective in 1962 alongside ‘Ochre Painting II’ (1951) and has been seen as the start of a continual line which can be drawn through the evolution of Guston’s career.