Kenneth Noland (b. 1924, Asheville, North Carolina; d. 2010, Port Clyde, Maine) attended Black Mountain College in the late forties and developed an early interest in the emotional effects of colour and geometric forms. He taught at various art schools including the Institute of Contemporary Art, Washington, D.C., Catholic University, Washington, D.C., Washington Workshop Center of the Arts and Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. In 1977 a major traveling retrospective of the artist's work was presented by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. In response, late art critic of The New York Times Hilton Kramer wrote, 'An art of this sort places a very heavy burden on the artist's sensibility for colour, of course—on his ability to come up, again and again, with fresh and striking combinations that both capture and sustain our attention, and provide the requisite pleasures...Mr. Noland is unquestionably a master.' The first in-depth survey of Noland's career was written by Kenworth Moffet and published by Abrams in 1977.
