Kenneth Noland

American abstract painter Kenneth Noland (1924-2010) was one of the primary exponents of Color Field painting. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Noland began using two central motifs that would have enduring significance in his work: the circle and the chevron. These seemingly reductive forms also conjured military badges, corporate logos for cars and other consumer products that were omnipresent in postwar America. Kenneth Noland: Paintings 1958-1968 is the first major publication on the artist since his recent death. In it, art historian Paul Hayes Tucker explores Noland's history as a soldier in the United States Army and his subsequent re-entry into a burgeoning American consumer society, portraying his art as inextricable from atomic age America. The book also features rare photographs of the artist as a young man and full-color reproductions of Noland's early formative work.

This catalogue covers the ABC's of Noland's pictorial vocabulary since he began painting in the 1950s--the circle, the chevron and the stripe. With that foundation, Noland built an influential oeuvre that communicated the substance and associative power of color. This compact retrospective provides a fine overview.