A major force in the development of American color field painting, Kenneth Noland (1924-2010) became celebrated for his Concentric Circle series that he began in 1958. Most of Noland's works fall into one of four formal motifs: circles (or targets), chevrons, stripes, and shaped canvases. Ever invested in the spatial relationship between the image and the edge of the canvas, Noland spent decades exploring its seemingly endless variations. Twice Told (1972) is a superb example of Noland’s series of slender, vertical tableaus from the 1970s, in which he overlapped bands of colors, dissecting the canvas with plaid stripes. Another example from this series, Tipperary Blue (1971), can be found in the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Montreal. In 1971, Walter Barnard described these new vertical paintings in Artforum as “composition of crisscross stripes and bands, often with a stained and abraded, or smoky, ground.”



Noland’s lifelong interest in the emotional effects of color comes into relief particularly in this painting. In 1977, Hilton Kramer, the art critic of the New York Times, wrote of Noland’s chromatic intuition: “An art of this sort places a very heavy burden on the artist’s sensibility for color, 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.” 



Born and raised in Asheville, North Carolina, Kenneth Noland studied at the Black Mountain College in the late 1940s and early 1950s, where he explored the possibilities of abstract painting. His studies at Black Mountain College, in 1946-48 and again in 1950, exposed him to the ideas of his instructors, among them Ilya Bolotowsky, Theodoros Stamos, and Clement Greenberg. During the same period, Noland developed close friendships with David Smith and Morris Louis. Louis and Noland visited New York City together in the spring of 1953, where they saw work by Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, and Helen Frankenthaler. Noland would visit New York every few months; from these visits, he was well acquainted with the principles of gesture and allover compositions that the avant-garde was exploring. With the support of the G.I. Bill, Noland studied painting in Paris in 1948, where he was particularly influenced by the work of Matisse and Paul Klee. 



By 1954, Noland’s style changed dramatically, a development closely linked to his friendship with fellow abstract artist Morris Louis. Inspired by their shared passion for color and prompted by seeing poured stain paintings in Helen Frankenthaler's studio, the two artists began collaborating on series of "jam paintings." These experiments in soaking large, unstretched canvases with diluted acrylic paint set new directions for each artist's oeuvre when they returned to working independently. For Noland, the dynamics of color became the primary subject matter of his painting.



Although Noland began showing his work in New York in 1956, he worked in the orbit of the New York art world, intentionally keeping himself apart at homes in Washington, D.C. and New England, except for a brief period in the early 1960s. In addition to painting prolifically and usually in series—notably circle paintings, then chevrons, then stripes, then circles again—Noland had a long career as a teacher at institutions including Catholic University and Bennington College. 



Born and raised in Asheville, North Carolina, Kenneth Noland studied at the Black Mountain College and was profoundly influenced by his close friendships with David Smith and Morris Louis. He has been honored with major retrospectives, and his work is included in numerous major collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C.; Whitney Museum of American Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Tate, London; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Art Institute of Chicago; among many others.