MILAN.- Cardi Gallery, the Milan-based modern and contemporary art gallery, presents Kenneth Noland Selected works 1958 – 1980, an exhibition of about ten works by the most recognized and admired American painter of the postwar style of abstraction known as Color Field painting.

On view, for the first time in Milan, at Cardi Gallery, works from 1958 to 1980, from the series: Target, Stripes, Shaped Canvas and Plaid. On display about ten works, including Target from 1958, dedicated to his last wife Paige Rense, Editor-in-chief of Architectural Digest and some middle-large size Stripes from the '60s and early 70s including Prairie, which was part of the historical 1970's exhibition at Galleria Leo Castelli in New York. Different sizes and different appearances instead define the Shaped works on display, all of them in Noland's classical style: two of them, from 1977, are vertical and shaped as an irregular hexagon, while Half day, from 1976, is a fan shaped work painted vertically in colour block. The 1978's piece To stay is prevailed by green sage colour contained in a nine side perimeter made by several multicolour thin lines. Call, from 1973 is part of the Plaid series, a big rhombus in orange, with centrally crossed lines, both vertical and horizontal.

All the works are from the artist's studio.

During the '50s Noland created masterpieces such as Targets or Circles that defined him as a Colour Field painter. The works of the '50s gave him the possibility to focus on the study of the concentric shapes: the results were some dartboard hypnotic colourful works that seem to move thanks to the wise combination of colour blocks.

The works of the '60s instead, make him a minimalist. In fact, he put apart the Target series, to carry the Chevon and the Stripes on: large size coarse canvas filled with acrylic colour directly applied on it. This new approach helped the artist in defining the intangible effect of painting. The Stripes are probably the most expensive works by Kenneth Noland, mostly because of their crude simplicity.

From the '70s are the Shaped Canvas, in which the painter uses the same technique of the Stripes except for the fact that the Shaped Canvas show a perimeter made of a juxtaposition of coloured bands. The core of the works can now be filled monochromatically. The Shaped Canvas are not square or rectangular anymore, but their shape is irregular, aiming to a more intensive physical and psychological inclusion.

The Plaids of the ‘70s are an evolution of the Chevron. They are characterized by some thin and regular lines, crossing each other orthogonally.

From the '80s Noland looks back to the formalism of his first Chevron.

After that, the artist fragments the canvas in smaller pieces coming sooner back to his Stripes and Circles. As the most important artists did, he not only wants to reaffirm his roots and the symbolism of his gesture, but also the audacity and brilliance oh his thoughts.