Kenneth Noland (born 1924) became a major American color-field painter. His works, extremely abstract in feeling, are strong in the splendor of the colors and their taut control.

Kenneth Noland was born in Asheville, North Carolina, on April 10, 1924. After serving in the Air Force in World War II, he used the G.I. bill to study at Black Mountain College in North Carolina from 1946 to 1949. There he worked under Ilya Bolotowsky, whose painting, a combination of geometrical design derived from the Dutch abstractionist Piet Mondrian and very personal color choices, had some influence on Noland's later work. Noland also studied sculpture and painting with Ossip Zadkine in Paris in 1948. While in Paris he had his first one-man show, in 1949.

In 1949 Noland moved to Washington, D.C., where he taught at the Institute of Contemporary Art and then at Catholic University (until 1960). He also was an instructor at the Washington...