Kenneth Noland

David Mirvish Gallery, Toronto
Acquired by the present owner from the above in 1976

Toronto, David Mirvish Gallery, Recent Paintings by Kenneth Noland, June 1974
Toronto, David Mirvish Gallery, An Exhibition of Paintings from 1958-1973, April - May 1976

Kenworth Moffett, Kenneth Noland, New York, 1977, pl. 203, illustrated in color

This work is in very good condition overall. The canvas is unlined. There are some minor scattered accretions toward the lower center and right center of the composition. Under Ultraviolet light inspection there is no evidence of restoration. Framed.
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Kenneth Noland's Circum-Grid Green (1973) belongs to a pivotal series of paintings referred to as the Plaids, characterized by narrow horizontal and vertical criss-crossing bands. Begun in 1971, this series marks the first time in 13 years in which Noland did not work exclusively with parallel lines. Foregoing the stretched horizontal bands employed in the artist’s paintings of the late 1960s, the surface of the Plaid pictures appears literally laced together, affording a dynamic visual assault that explodes notions of foreground and background. Zips of electric yellow and soft lavender weave through mint greens and merlot red; the merging hues all contain the character of Noland's iconic staining, with their softly delineated edges often poetically bleeding into each other.

Noland was first and foremost interested in chromatics, which can be seen in his surprising color choices and in the bold harmony of Circum-Grid Green.  The Plaids are closely indebted to the work of Piet Mondrian, and in particular, his paintings from the mid-1930s in which primary colors act as means to counterbalance and punctuate black and white grids. However, in contrast to Mondrian, Noland employed color in an almost Impressionistic sense; his Plaids wash across the canvases surface, highlighting the tactility of color and creating the possibility for adjacent relationships where individual hues can interrelate. Circum-Grid Green, a key work of Noland's Plaid paintings, flaunts its color and flatness, while retaining Noland's vision of intrigue created through simplicity.