Katherine and Tom Belk Visual Art Center

American painter. Kenneth Noland (1924-2010) was an American painter who was centrally involved in many art movements throughout the 20th century including Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, and Color Field painting. Being a North Carolina native and WWII veteran, Noland attended the experimental Black Mountain College on the G.I. Bill where he was taught by influential artists Ilya Botolosky and Josef Albers, exposing Noland to Neoplasticism and Bauhaus color theory. Noland was later introduced to Helen Frankethaler by critic Clement Greenberg and adopted her “soak-stain” technique of letting thinned paint soak through unprimed canvases to create an effect that resembles watercolor. Combined with Noland’s stripe motif that can be seen in many of his paintings, the soak-stain technique can also be seen here in Untitled. To inaugurate the opening of the new Katherine and Tom Belk Visual Art Center in 1993, Herb Jackson and Davidson College held a retrospective of Noland’s work and awarded him an honorary degree, and Noland gifted this large work after the retrospective.