Getting to Know...Kenneth Noland

Noland painting in 1968, courtesy of Smithsonian Archives of American Art.

Abstract artist Kenneth Noland was born in Asheville on April 10, 1924. Noland devoted much of his career to studying the interaction of contrasting and complementing colors. His most famous paintings feature a circle or chevron pattern that contains a distinct array of colors.

After a four-year stint in the Air Force, he enrolled at Black Mountain College in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The experimental liberal arts college, now closed, challenged students to learn through their own creative approach. Noland went on to Paris to study art before returning to the United States and teaching in New York and Washington, D.C.