Artist 26: Kenneth Noland

Kenneth Noland was an American painter born in North Carolina in 1924.  Throughout his childhood he played with paints, which instilled in him the love of painting.  Following the United States entry into World War II Noland enlisted in the Air Force.  After his four years of service he put his G.I. Bill to use and in 1946 he enrolled in Black Mountain College.  After two years at Black Mountain College he traveled to Paris and studied under a Russian Cubist, which Noland later rebelled against that type of art wanting an ultra-simplified color and form.  He spent only a year in Paris and upon his return to the United States he began his teaching career, first at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Washington D.C. followed by a tenure at Catholic University.  While at Catholic University he also spent time teaching at the Washington Workshop Center for the Arts.  His early works were more abstract expressionist but he some abandoned that style for a series of color-field paintings for which he would become the best known.  In 1963 he shifted his focus again to a more simple, minimalistic, abstract image.  This phase lasted until the late 1960s when he began painting horizontal stripes of color on canvases.  In his later years he returned to different aspects of each of his artistic phases as well as to teaching.