Kenneth Noland

Kenneth Noland was married four times. His first wife was the daughter of U.S. senator William Langer. The couple had three children, Cady, Lyndon, and William. They divorced soon after.

He had an affair with artist and socialite Mary Pinchot Meyer in the 1960s.

In April 1967, he married psychologist Stephanie Gordon. He and Stephanie lived together for three years before marrying. They divorced three years after in June 1970.

Kenneth Clifton Noland was born on April 10, 1924, in Asheville, North Carolina. His parents were pathologist Harry Caswell Noland and Bessie Noland.

He was one of five siblings, David, Bill, Neil, and Harry Jr. He described his father as an amateur painter who instilled the love of the arts and painting in him.

He completed high school in 1942 and later attended Black Mountain College for two years near his hometown. At Black Mountain, he studied color theory and contrasts of negative space, and geometric abstraction.

In 1948, he traveled to Paris to study under Russian sculptor, OssipZadkine. He would later go on to rebel against cubist teachings focusing on simplicity and form.

Uunder the guidance of Zadkine in 1949, he had his first one-person exhibition of his paintings in France at the Galerie Raymond Creuze.

Noland began his career as a teacher. After his education in Paris, he returned to America and began teaching fine arts at the “Institute of Contemporary Art” in Washington DC. He taught there for 3 years from 1949 to 1951.

In the summer of 1950, he met artist Helen Frankenthaler and critic, Clement Greenberg. Both of them would become his greatest supporters. This meeting was a turning point in his career as it helped him develop his artistic style.

His meeting with Helen Frankenthaler enabled him to adopt her “soak-stain” techniques into his own canvases. During his period at the Washington Workshop Center for the Arts in DC, he met Morris Louis, another artist in his league.

From 1951 to 1960, he taught at the “Catholic University” in Washington DC. He also taught at the “Washington Workshop Center for the Arts” from 1952 to 1956.

“Beginning” (1958) was one of his earliest paintings that depicted a bull’s eye using an unlikely combination of colors. His belief was that any piece should be about the art and not the artist. During this period, he created a series of art that were similar to targets.

He indulged in creating many geometric abstracts such as “Baba Yagga” (1964) and “Galore” (1966).