American, 1917-2010

Robert Goodnough was a painter associated with Abstract Expressionism and has created a body of work ranging from his early lyrical paintings to the tightly-composed works influenced by collage, produced later in his career.

The New York Times described Goodnough as a painter who “eluded the neat categories that art critics relied on to codify the work of the Abstract Expressionists.” He worked among many of the members of the school but stood apart from his peers with his calligraphic dashes of primary colors. Goodnough’s approach to painting was varied, he once told an interviewer “I like to work freely, to slash with the brush and let loose,” but then conversely added “I also like to work carefully and with discipline.” His early work was influenced by Piet Mondrian, Henri Matisse and Synthetic Cubism and then shifted toward Color Field painting with jagged shapes against ghostly backgrounds in the 1970s. Goodnough’s later work was reminiscent of his earliest paintings with frenetic strokes of paint and complex lines.

Born in Cortland, NY, Goodnough graduated from Syracuse University, and worked in a representational mode while painting in school. He did not receive much exposure to Modernist or Abstract Art until after graduation, when he worked with Abstract painter Hans Hofmann). During the late 1940s, he studied art education at New York University, and later taught at Syracuse and at Cornell University. Goodnough’s studied Hofmann’s celebrated school in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where he met artists Alfred Leslie and Larry Rivers and critic Clement Greenberg. He became friends with Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko at meetings of the Club, a famous discussion group made up of abstract painters. 

EDUCATION:
1947-1950, New York University
Syracuse University
Ozenfant School of Fine Arts

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS:
2018, F.L. Braswell Fine Art, Chicago, Chicago Antiques + Art + Design Show
2018, Bethesda Fine Art, Bethesda, Exploring Abstraction
2018, Alpha 137 Gallery, The Mid Century Modern Aesthetic
2017 F.L. Braswell Fine Art, Winnetka, The Antiques & Modernism Winnetka Show
2017, Bethesda Fine Art, Bethesda, Washington Color School: 50 Years Later

AWARDS:
Awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts.