Label TextThe gridded structure of black lines and geometric forms in Robert Goodnough’s Circle IV demonstrates the influence of Piet Mondrian (Dutch, 1872–1944), a founder of the avant-garde De Stijl movement, which sought a universal modern aesthetic through radically simplified abstraction. The painterly drips, however, hint at Goodnough’s more expressive brushwork, seen in his painting The Chief on view nearby. In fact, Goodnough was associated with the second generation of Abstract Expressionists.
In the late 1940s, Goodnough attended Hans Hofmann’s summer art school (a painting by Hofmann is on view in this gallery) in Provincetown, Massachusetts, before graduating from New York University with a master’s degree in art education. He became friends with painters Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, and others through the Eighth Street Club, or simply “The Club,” which a group of largely abstract painters in Manhattan founded in 1949. Weekly meetings were filled with volatile discussions and arguments, which sometimes continued, and became even more heated, at the nearby dive bar the Cedar Tavern.
(Label text, 2017)