Robert Goodnough (American, 1917-2010)
Seated Figure AA, 1962
frame: 29 5/8 x 27 5/8 x 1 1/4 in. (75.2 x 70.2 x 3.2 cm)
Oil on canvas
Bequest of Lawrence H. Bloedel, Class of 1923, Courtesy of the Whitney Museum of American Art
85.40.3
Introduction
Robert Goodnough (October 23, 1917 – October 2, 2010) was an American abstract expressionist painter. A veteran of World War II, Goodnough was one of the last of the original generation of the New York School, though he has been referred to as a member of the “second generation” of Abstract Expressionists. He began exhibiting his work in New York City galleries in the early 1950s. Goodnough was among the 24 artists (out of 256 participants) included in the famous 9th Street Art Exhibition (1951) and in all the New York Painting and Sculpture Annuals from 1953 to 1957. These Annuals were significant because the participants were chosen by the artists themselves.
Early in his career, starting in 1950, Goodnough showed his paintings at the Wittenborn Gallery, NYC. He exhibited at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery in New York City from 1952 to 1970 and again from 1984 to 1986. In 1960 and 1961, he had solo exhibitions at The Art Institute of Chicago. A veteran of numerous solo and group exhibitions in the United States and abroad, Goodnough also had solo exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art in NYC and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo in 1969. In later years, his paintings were associated with the Color Field movement.
Education & Career
Robert Arthur Goodnough was born on October 23, 1917, in Cortland, N.Y., and grew up nearby in Moravia, in the Finger Lakes region. After earning a fine-arts degree from Syracuse University in 1940, he was drafted into the Army and served in the field artillery, painting portraits and murals at military installations.
After the war, Goodnough attended the Ozenfant School of Fine Arts in New York and the Hans Hofmann summer school in Provincetown, Massachusetts. He earned his master’s degree from New York University in 1950, after which he began to exhibit his paintings publicly and also wrote articles for ARTnews magazine.
Robert Goodnough, Painter Who Eluded Categories, Dies at 92 – New York Times
Style & Work
Goodnough’s earlier work, influenced by Mondrian, Matisse, and Synthetic Cubism, used patches and strokes of paint that suggested tumult and frenetic activity. “Some of his thicket-like designs throb with the fervor of an old symbolic representation of the Burning Bush, while others have the formal, explicit robustness of Léger,” wrote Stuart Preston in a New York Times review of a 1962 show.
In violation of abstractionist orthodoxy, Goodnough sometimes embedded images in the complex mesh of what he liked to call “color shapes.” “Charging Bull” (1958) unmistakably depicts a charging bull. He also experimented with collages reminiscent of Matisse’s cutouts and made sculptural constructions of dinosaurs — a lifelong enthusiasm.
Shows & Exhibits
Although he never received a retrospective at a major museum, Goodnough was given a one-man show at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo in 1969 to showcase his series of serigraph prints, “One, Two, Three (An Homage to Pablo Casals).”
