The Quest Statue – Standard Insurance Center, S.W. 5th Avenue, Portland, Oregon

The Quest, sometimes referred to as Saturday Night at the Y or Three Groins in the Fountain, is an outdoor marble sculpture located in downtown Portland, Oregon in the United States. It depicts five "larger than life" nude figures, including three females, one male and one child. The statue is set on a pedestal within a fountain, surrounded by water jets. The figures’ forms curve upward, and two of the females have their hands raised, while the third "sleeps in the rear". The male figure appears to float and is reaching up with both hands, while the child figure is located behind the foremost female.

The Quest was created in 1970 by Count Alexander von Svoboda, an Austria-born, Toronto-based sculptor. It was commissioned by the Georgia-Pacific Company in 1967 and installed in front of the Standard Insurance Center (then known as the Georgia-Pacific Building) at Southwest 5th Avenue and Southwest Taylor Street in 1970. The statues were hewn from one 200 ton block of white Pentelic Greek marble. The figures are 5 times larger than real life. It took the artist 2 ½ years to complete the sculpture and required thirty-five stonemasons to assist him.

The Quest is not just a sculpture, but is also a water feature. It sits in the southern end of a long rectangular pool, about 50 feet long and fifteen feet wide and takes up about half of the space in front of the building. The base of the sculpture is surrounded by small water jets. There is also a waterfall coming from the statue itself. In the 60% or so of the fountain not taken up by the statue, two vertical jets shoot water about five feet into the air. Submerged in the 10 or so inches of water are nine floodlights that light up the statue during the evening hours. The finished sculpture weighs seventeen tons! Von Svoboda described The Quest in these words:

"It depicts the growth of today and tomorrow and the awakening to the future. I wanted to have complete contrast between this piece of sculpture and the Georgia-Pacific Building. The sculpture is designed to lead the beholder to look towards the middle of the building and then up."