ART-PRESENTATION: Kenneth Noland

Kenneth Noland, Peridot, 1982, Acrylic on canvas, 52,1 x 231.1 cm, Courtesy of the Kenneth Noland Foundation & Galerie Almine Rech, Paris © Adagp, 2019 Paris
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Kenneth Noland, an innovative colorist, is considered nowadays as one of the leading figures of the American Color Field and Post Painterly Abstraction. Educated from 1946 to 1948 at the Black Mountain College with Josef Albers, he adopted a Minimalist approach comprised vivid colors and simple geometric shapes in endless variations.

By Vassiliki Liakopoulou
Photo: Galerie Almine Rech Paris Archive

Galerie Almine Rech Paris, in collaboration with the Paige Rense Noland 2008 Marital Trust and the Kenneth Noland Foundation, presents for the first time paintings of Kenneth Noland. This selection of works, rarely shown in Paris and generally in France, constitutes an important survey exhibition of Kenneth Noland’s work realized between 1960 and 2006. By 1960, the artist, inspired by Helen Frankenthaler’s technique of staining unprimed canvas, has started to experiment with a wide range of acrylic hues in concentric circles and chevrons. Despite seemingly simple forms, these shapes are connected within Noland’s history from his army days and even with the theories of Wilhelm Reich, whose writings Noland encountered in the 50s. In the 70s, he concentrates in a new direction of his work inventing the plaid patterns on variously shaped canvases- also included several square diamonds- and “playing” with the edges of paintings’ shapes  by means of color. From the end of 70s and the early 1980s, the shapes ranged from regular to slightly irregular and unconventional irregular hexagons culminating in the slender forms referred to as surfboards. At the same time, in his work , there is a new emphasis on layering and transparency and an interest in new varieties of color application. In the last years, Noland combined all he had discovered over the course of his latest series ,  a fusion of emphatic color ,an in and out weaving of pinks and blues. With these paintings, he not only invites the viewer into a dialogue with the art, the artist and world around us, but also he probably reminds us  the American Luminist painters of 19th Century. And this because they did not aim to depict the nature as grand and imposing as Romanticists had, but in a smaller size in order to provoke a quiet spirituality based on a close observation of natural phenomena , especially the quality of light.

Info: Almine Rech Gallery, 64 Rue de Turenne, 75003 Paris, Duration 18/4/19-25/5/19,Days & Hours: Tuesday— Saturday, 11:00 -19:00, www.alminerech.com

Kenneth Noland, Untitled, 1975, Acrylic on canvas, 200 x 80 cm, Courtesy of the Kenneth Noland Foundation & Galerie Almine Rech, Paris, © Adagp, 2019 Paris
Kenneth Noland, Untitled, 1975, Acrylic on canvas, 200 x 80 cm, Courtesy of the Kenneth Noland Foundation & Galerie Almine Rech, Paris, © Adagp, 2019 Paris

 

 

Left: Kenneth Noland, Comet, 1983, Acrylic on canvas — 215,9 × 176,8 cm, Courtesy of the Kenneth Noland Foundation & Galerie Almine Rech-Paris, © Adagp, 2019 Paris. Right: Kenneth Noland, Version, 198, Acrylic on canvas, 165.1 x 41.9 cm, Courtesy of the Kenneth Noland Foundation & Galerie Almine Rech-Paris, © Adagp, 2019 Paris
Left: Kenneth Noland, Comet, 1983, Acrylic on canvas — 215,9 × 176,8 cm, Courtesy of the Kenneth Noland Foundation & Galerie Almine Rech-Paris, © Adagp, 2019 Paris. Right: Kenneth Noland, Version, 198, Acrylic on canvas, 165.1 x 41.9 cm, Courtesy of the Kenneth Noland Foundation & Galerie Almine Rech-Paris, © Adagp, 2019 Paris

 

 

Kenneth Noland, Interliner, 1973, Acrylic on canvas, 153 x 153 cm, Courtesy of the Kenneth Noland Foundation & Galerie Almine Rech-Paris, © Adagp, 2019 Paris
Kenneth Noland, Interliner, 1973, Acrylic on canvas, 153 x 153 cm, Courtesy of the Kenneth Noland Foundation & Galerie Almine Rech-Paris, © Adagp, 2019 Paris