Kenneth Noland

Kenneth Noland , 1924-, American painter, b. Asheville, N.C. Noland first experimented with bands of pure color in bull's-eye and chevron motifs and horizontal parallel stripes. He emphasized the flatness of his canvas by staining paint into raw canvas and using uniform color values. In his work color itself is the subject. Later paintings treat plaid designs with muted color bands of varied width.

Bibliography: See R. H. Love, Kenneth Noland: Major Works (1986).

Noland, Kenneth (b Asheville, NC, 10 Apr. 1924). American abstract painter and sculptor. In 1949 he settled in Washington, where he became a close friend of Morris Louis. On a visit to New York in 1953 they were greatly impressed by Helen Frankenthaler's Mountains and Sea and they began experimenting with the kind of pouring and staining techniques she pioneered. They became the leading figures of a group of Colour Field Painters known as the Washington Color Painters, but from the late 1950s Noland tended to use more precisely articulated geometrical forms, and in the 1960s he became one of the chief exponents of Hard-Edge Painting. Initially he used concentric circles on a square canvas. This was followed by a chevron motif, sometimes on a diamond- or lozenge-shaped canvas, and this again was gradually lengthened into horizontal stripes running across a canvas of a very long rectangular format. In 1966 he began to make sculpture, influenced by his friend Anthony Caro.