Joe Goode

Zander Galerie Paris is pleased to present a focused installation of two fire paintings by American artist Joe Goode (1937-2025). Created between 1982 and 2015, both works belong to the artist’s celebrated Forest Fire series, inspired by the dramatic skies and smoke of a devastating wildfire in California. Marking a pivotal moment in Goode’s career, these paintings reflect his enduring exploration of perception and the natural world, while revealing a deeply poetic response to one of nature’s most powerful and transformative forces.

Born in Oklahoma City in 1937, Joe Goode was a leading figure of the post-war Californian art scene. He moved to Los Angeles in 1959 to study at the Chouinard Art Institute, where he joined a generation of artists who challenged the legacy of Abstract Expressionism by turning their attention to the visual experience of everyday life. In 1962, Walter Hopps included Goode’s work in the landmark exhibition New Painting of Common Objects at the Pasadena Art Museum, alongside artists including Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Ed Ruscha, in what is widely regarded as the first museum exhibition devoted to Pop Art in the United States. Although often associated with both Pop Art and the Light and Space movement, Goode developed a distinctly personal practice centered on the act of seeing itself.

The Forest Fire series originated in 1982, after Goode witnessed the dramatic smoke and coloured skies caused by a wildfire near his home in Springville, California. Although he never saw the flames themselves, the shifting clouds of smoke and the changing hues of the sky left a profound impression on him, inspiring a body of work that he continued to explore for more than three decades. Rather than depicting fire as a purely destructive force, Goode approached it as a constantly evolving natural phenomenon and as part of a larger cycle of transformation and renewal. The subtle variations of colour reflect different stages and intensities of the fire, while the compositions evoke its movement, atmosphere and immaterial presence. More than representations of a landscape, these paintings invite viewers to experience the changing qualities of light, colour and space that define Joe Goode’s singular vision of the natural world. They also reveal his enduring pursuit of the essence of things.