1963
American
oil on canvas
Overall: 84 × 84 in. (213.36 × 213.36 cm)
85.395
Not on view

"I like to work freely, to slash with the brush and let loose. I also like to work carefully and with discipline." —Robert Goodnough

 Goodnough was an active participant in the community of first-generation Abstract Expressionists, which also included Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, and Jackson Pollock. While he utilized gestural abstraction, he also grounded his pictures in compositional structures influenced by analytical cubism. Also immersed in the history of art, he based thecomposition of Abduction on Peter Paul Rubens’s early 17th-century painting Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus. Like his Bay of Pigs and Vietnam of the same year, Abduction most likely reflected his attitude toward the tense international climate of the cold war.

Gift of Sydney and Frances Lewis
"Selections from the Lewis Collection: 20th Century Gallery Loan Exhibition", Botetourt Gallery, Earl Gregg Severn Library, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA, April 1970

"Selections from the Lewis Collection" Richmond Artists' Association Carillon Show, Richmond, Virginia, March 1969
©artist or artist’s estate

Some object records are not complete and do not reflect VMFA's full and current knowledge. VMFA makes routine updates as records are reviewed and enhanced.