Kenneth Noland (April 10, 1924 – January 5, 2010) was an American painter. He was one of the best-known American color field painters, although in the 1950s he was thought of as an

abstract expressionist Abstract expressionism is a post–World War II art movement in American painting, developed in New York City in the 1940s. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve international influence and put New York at the center of th ...

and in the early 1960s he was thought of as a

minimalist In visual arts, music and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in post– World War II in Western art, most strongly with American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with minimalism include Do ...

painter. Noland helped establish the Washington Color School movement. In 1977, he was honored by a major retrospective at the

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum at 1071 Fifth Avenue on the corner of East 89th Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It is the permanent home of a continuously exp ...

in New York that then traveled to the

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an art museum beside the National Mall, in Washington, D.C., the United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was desig ...

in Washington, D.C. and Ohio's

Toledo Museum of Art The Toledo Museum of Art is an internationally known art museum located in the Old West End neighborhood of Toledo, Ohio. It houses a collection of more than 30,000 objects. With 45 galleries, it covers 280,000 square feet and is currently in th ...

in 1978. In 2006, Noland's ''Stripe Paintings'' were exhibited at the

Tate Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...

in London.

Early life and education

A son of Harry Caswell Noland (1896–1975), a

pathologist Pathology is the study of the causes and effects of disease or injury. The word ''pathology'' also refers to the study of disease in general, incorporating a wide range of biology research fields and medical practices. However, when used in th ...

, and his wife, Bessie (1897–1980), Kenneth Clifton Noland was born in

Asheville Asheville ( ) is a city in, and the county seat of, Buncombe County, North Carolina. Located at the confluence of the French Broad and Swannanoa rivers, it is the largest city in Western North Carolina, and the state's 11th-most populous ci ...

North Carolina North Carolina () is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the List of U.S. states and territories by area, 28th largest and List of states and territories of the United ...

. He had four siblings: David, Bill, Neil, and Harry Jr. Noland enlisted in the U.S. Air Force in 1942 after completing high school. As a veteran of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

, Noland took advantage of the G.I. Bill to study art at the experimental

Black Mountain College Black Mountain College was a private liberal arts college in Black Mountain, North Carolina. It was founded in 1933 by John Andrew Rice, Theodore Dreier, and several others. The college was ideologically organized around John Dewey's educational ...

in his home state of North Carolina. At Black Mountain, where two of his brothers also studied art, Noland studied with

Ilya Bolotowsky Ilya Bolotowsky (July 1, 1907 – November 22, 1981) was a leading early 20th-century Russian-American painter in abstract styles in New York City. His work, a search for philosophical order through visual expression, embraced cubism and ge ...

, a professor who introduced him to

neoplasticism Neoplasticism, known in Dutch as ''Nieuwe Beelding'' or the new image, is an avant-garde art theory that arose in 1917 and was employed mainly by Dutch De Stijl artists. The most notable advocates of the theory were the painters Theo van Doe ...

and the work of

Piet Mondrian Pieter Cornelis Mondriaan (), after 1906 known as Piet Mondrian (, also , ; 7 March 1872 – 1 February 1944), was a Dutch painter and art theoretician who is regarded as one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. He is known for being o ...

. Noland also studied

Bauhaus The Staatliches Bauhaus (), commonly known as the Bauhaus (), was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined crafts and the fine arts.Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edn., 20 ...

theory and color there under

Josef Albers Josef Albers (; ; March 19, 1888March 25, 1976) was a German-born artist and educator. The first living artist to be given a solo show at MoMA and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, he taught at the Bauhaus and Black Mountain College ...

and became interested in

Paul Klee Paul Klee (; 18 December 1879 – 29 June 1940) was a Swiss-born German artist. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. Klee was a natural draftsman who experimented ...

—specifically Klee's sensitivity to color.

Career

In 1948 and 1949 Noland worked with

Ossip Zadkine Ossip Zadkine (russian: Осип Цадкин; 28 January 1888 – 25 November 1967) was a Belarusian-born French artist. He is best known as a sculptor, but also produced paintings and lithographs. Early years and education Zadkine was born on ...

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Si ...

, and had his first exhibition of his paintings there in 1949. After returning to the U.S., he taught in Washington, D.C. at

Catholic University Catholic higher education includes universities, colleges, and other institutions of higher education privately run by the Catholic Church, typically by religious institutes. Those tied to the Holy See are specifically called pontifical uni ...

(1951–1960) and the Institute of Contemporary Arts. In the early 1950s he met

Morris Louis Morris Louis Bernstein (November 28, 1912 – September 7, 1962), known professionally as Morris Louis, was an American painter. During the 1950s he became one of the earliest exponents of Color Field painting. While living in Washington, D. ...

in D.C. while teaching night classes at the Washington Workshop Center for the Arts. He became friends with Louis, and after being introduced by

Clement Greenberg Clement Greenberg () (January 16, 1909 – May 7, 1994), occasionally writing under the pseudonym K. Hardesh, was an American essayist known mainly as an art critic closely associated with American modern art of the mid-20th century and a formali ...

Helen Frankenthaler Helen Frankenthaler (December 12, 1928 – December 27, 2011) was an American abstract expressionist painter. She was a major contributor to the history of postwar American painting. Having exhibited her work for over six decades (early 1950s u ...

and seeing her new paintings at her studio in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

in 1953, he and Louis adopted her "soak-stain" technique of allowing thinned paint to soak into unprimed canvases. Most of Noland's paintings fall into one of four groups: circles (or targets), chevrons, stripes and shaped canvases. His preoccupation with the relationship of the image to the containing edge of the picture led him to a series of studies of concentric rings or bullseyes, commonly referred to as targets, which, like the one reproduced here called ''Beginning'' from 1958, used unlikely color combinations. This also led Noland away from Morris Louis in 1958. In 1964, he was included in the exhibition ''

Post-Painterly Abstraction Post-painterly abstraction is a term created by art critic Clement Greenberg as the title for an exhibit he curated for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1964, which subsequently travelled to the Walker Art Center and the Art Gallery of Toront ...

'' curated by

, which traveled the country and helped to firmly establish color field painting as an important new movement in the

contemporary art Contemporary art is the art of today, produced in the second half of the 20th century or in the 21st century. Contemporary artists work in a globally influenced, culturally diverse, and technologically advancing world. Their art is a dynamic ...

of the 1960s. Noland pioneered the shaped canvas, initially with a series of symmetrical and asymmetrical diamonds or chevrons. In these paintings, the edges of the canvas become as structurally important as the center. During the 1970s and 1980s his shaped canvases were highly irregular and asymmetrical. These resulted in increasingly complex structures of highly sophisticated and controlled color and surface integrity. Instead of painting the canvas with a brush, Noland's style was to stain the canvas with color. This idea sought to remove the artist through brushstrokes. This made the piece about the art, not the artist. He emphasized spatial relationships in his work by leaving unstained, bare canvas as a contrast against the colors used throughout his paintings. Noland used simplified abstraction so the design would not detract from the use of color. Noland's students included the sculptor Jennie Lea Knight, and painter

Alice Mavrogordato Alice Mavrogordato (née Alice Blum; 1916–2000) was an Austrian-born American artist, and translator. She is known for her abstract oil paintings, and is associated with the Washington Color School movement. She worked as a translator during the ...

Personal life

Noland was married to: * Cornelia Langer, a daughter of a Republican U.S. senator from

North Dakota North Dakota () is a U.S. state in the Upper Midwest, named after the indigenous Dakota Sioux. North Dakota is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba to the north and by the U.S. states of Minnesota to the east, ...

William Langer William "Wild Bill" Langer (September 30, 1886November 8, 1959) was a prominent American lawyer and politician from North Dakota, where he was an infamous character, bouncing back from a scandal that forced him out of the governor's office and ...

. The couple married in 1950 and later divorced. They had three children: daughters Cady and Lyndon (a.k.a. Lyn) and a son, William. * Stephanie Gordon, a psychologist, lived with Noland from November 1964 until June 1970. They married in April 1967 and divorced in June 1970. * Peggy L. Schiffer, an art historian and daughter of Dr. Morton A. Schiffer. Married circa 1970, the Nolands had one son, Samuel Jesse. *

Paige Rense Paige Rense, also known as Paige Rense Noland (May 4, 1929 – January 1, 2021) was an American writer and editor who served as editor-in-chief of ''Architectural Digest'' magazine from 1975 until 2010. She founded the Arthur Rense Prize poetry ...

, editor in chief of ''

Architectural Digest ''Architectural Digest'' is an American monthly magazine founded in 1920. Its principal subjects are interior design and landscaping, rather than pure external architecture. The magazine is published by Condé Nast, which also publishes internati ...

'', whom he married in

Bennington, Vermont Bennington is a town in Bennington County, Vermont, United States. It is one of two shire towns (county seats) of the county, the other being Manchester. As of the 2020 US Census, the population was 15,333. Bennington is the most populous t ...

on April 10, 1994. Noland was her fourth husband; her previous spouses included Arthur F. Rense. Noland had an affair in the 1960s with artist and socialite

Mary Pinchot Meyer Mary Eno Pinchot Meyer (; October 14, 1920 – October 12, 1964) was an American painter who lived in Washington D.C. She was married to Central Intelligence Agency official Cord Meyer from 1945–1958, and became involved romantically with P ...

Death

Noland died of

kidney cancer Kidney cancer, also known as renal cancer, is a group of cancers that starts in the kidney. Symptoms may include blood in the urine, lump in the abdomen, or back pain. Fever, weight loss, and tiredness may also occur. Complications can include sp ...

at his home in

Port Clyde, Maine Port Clyde is the southernmost settlement on the St. George peninsula in central/coastal Maine and part of the town of St. George in Knox County, Maine, United States. The ZIP Code for Port Clyde is 04855. In the 19th century, Port Clyde became ...

, on January 5, 2010 at the age of 85.

Exhibitions

Noland had his first solo exhibition at Galerie Raymond Creuze in Paris in 1948. In 1957, he had his first New York solo exhibition at the

Tibor de Nagy Gallery The Tibor de Nagy Gallery is an art gallery located on Rivington Street in the Lower East Side neighborhood of Manhattan. History Tibor de Nagy Gallery is among the earliest modern art galleries in New York City. The gallery was founded by T ...

. In 1964, Noland occupied half the American pavilion at the

Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...

.Kenneth Noland

, New York. In 1965, his work was exhibited at the

Washington Gallery of Modern Art The Washington Gallery of Modern Art was a short-lived gallery promoting contemporary art near Dupont Circle in Washington, DC, United States, during the 1960s. The gallery remained open for seven years, opening in October 1961 and closing in Sep ...

and the

Jewish Museum (New York) The Jewish Museum is an art museum and repository of cultural artifacts, housed at 1109 Fifth Avenue, in the former Felix M. Warburg House, along Museum Mile on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City. The first Jewish museum in the Unit ...

. Noland's final solo exhibition, ''Kenneth Noland Shaped Paintings 1981–82'', opened on October 29, 2009 at the Leslie Feely Fine Art Gallery on East 68th Street in

and was scheduled to close on January 9, 2010 (though the closing date was later extended to January 16). In 2010, Noland was honored with a solo presentation of his work at the

Guggenheim Museum The Guggenheim Museums are a group of museums in different parts of the world established (or proposed to be established) by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Museums in this group include: Locations Americas * The Solomon R. Guggenhei ...

, entitled ''Kenneth Noland, 1924–2010: A Tribute''. In addition, his work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at a range of international institutions, including the Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City (1983);

Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao The Bilbao Fine Arts Museum (Spanish: ''Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao'', Basque: ''Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa'') is an art museum located in the city of Bilbao, Spain. The building of the museum is located entirely inside the city's Doña Casil ...

, Bilbao, Spain (1985);

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), is an art museum located in the Houston Museum District of Houston, Texas. With the recent completion of an eight-year campus redevelopment project, including the opening of the Nancy and Rich Kinder Buil ...

(2004);

, Liverpool (2006); and

Butler Institute of American Art The Butler Institute of American Art, located on Wick Avenue in Youngstown, Ohio, United States, was the first museum dedicated exclusively to American art. Established by local industrialist and philanthropist Joseph G. Butler, Jr., the museum h ...

, Youngstown, Ohio (1986 and 2007).

Influence

In 1984, US menswear designer Alexander Julian incorporated Noland's designs and coloring in his knitwear.

Selected museum collections

Selected works

Notes

References

* Gowing, L (ed.) 1995, ''A Biographical Dictionary of Artists'', Rev. edn, Andromeda Oxford Limited, Oxfordshire.

External links

Kenneth Noland in the National Gallery of Australia's Kenneth Tyler collection

Tate08 Series: Kenneth Noland: The Stripe Paintings
exhibition at Tate Liverpool, England, 2006

TheArtStory.com/Kenneth_Noland

Kenneth Noland at The Phillips Collection
''New York Times'' artblog by Roberta Smith

Noland's works at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

''The Guardian'' Obituary
an
letter from Anthony Caro

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Noland, Kenneth American contemporary painters 20th-century American painters American male painters Abstract painters Minimalist artists Abstract expressionist artists Artists from New York (state) Painters from North Carolina United States Army Air Forces personnel of World War II Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Black Mountain College alumni Artists from Asheville, North Carolina Military personnel from North Carolina Deaths from cancer in Maine Deaths from kidney cancer 1924 births 2010 deaths 20th-century American printmakers 20th-century American male artists