(Rome 1927–2005 Perugia)
Untitled [Contro il rassegnarsi], 1967, Signed, dated, dedicated and inscribed on the reverse, oil on canvas, 100 x 100, framed

This work is registered in the Archivio Piero Dorazio, Milan and is accompanied by a photo certificate of authenticity

Provenance:
V. Pirozzi Collection, Rome
Sale Farsetti, Prato, 27 May 2000, lot 303
Anfiteatro Arte, Milan
European Private Collection

Exhibited:
Milan, Galleria Anfiteatro Arte, 1999, exh. cat. p. 47 no. 15 with ill.
Genoa, Dorazio, Marco Canepa Arte Contemporanea, 2006, exh. cat. with ill.
Padua, Piero Dorazio, Anfiteatro Arte, 1 February – 18 March 2007, exh. cat. p. 74 and 75 with ill. (label on the reverse)


Literature:
M. Volpi Orandini, J. Lassaigne, G. Crisafi, Dorazio Catalogo ragionato delle opere, Alfieri Editore, 1977, no. 8 (in the addenda at the end of the catalogue)

The subject of the painting always drives from the previous painting, hence there is no reason for inspiration. One tries again, keeps on trying to do what he has already done…
Piero Dorazio

Of all the great first and second generation American painters I have known since 1953 (the third generation is not yet discernable), Kenneth Noland is a truly singular case.

He is from North Carolina and Washington, i.e. the provinces, rather than the artistic milieu of New York.

[...]In the 1950s and 1960s I never understood whether some artistic circles in the Metropolis or certain isolated artists like Kenneth Noland and Morris Louis, Georgia O'Keeffe in New Mexico or Andrew Wyeth in Pennsylvania were more provincial. Although isolated, Louis and Noland were already the most modern of modern American painters in the early 1960s. They were a surprising revelation when discovered and presented by the critic Clement Greenberg at the French and Co. Gallery in New York. Their exhibitions in that gallery between '59 and '60 remain by far the most exciting of the decade.

Kenneth Noland's painting has nothing to do, therefore, with all the clichés of American painting disseminated here by European critics who have framed all expressions into schools or categories or groups (Action Painting, New Dada, Abstract expressionism, Pop Art, Minimal Art etc.) letting what were actually the most creative values and personalities slip through their fingers. [...]

Ken Noland established himself, from the late 1960s and 1970s, among those few artists defined as 'Colour field painters' or 'Post Painterly Abstraction' not as a group but rather as a trend: Helen Frankenhaler, Morris Louis, Jules Olitsky, Friedel Dzubas, Larry Poons. There was a convergence of interests among these painters for colour as an element that defines large spaces and long periods of time for the observer, who is induced to meditate because he is immersed in the rhythm of the lines and chromatic masses of a truly abstract painting, devoid of any allusion or reference to the real, the metaphysical or the subjective temperament. Painting that refers on the one hand to the decorative character of early Matisse, and on the other to the secular spirit of Constructivism. Among those painters, Noland was always the one who, with tenacity and clarity of purpose, was best able to sublimate 'pure visibility' into a highly lyrical personal poetics. His nature as a colourist and his technique inspired his constant formal research into surface-colour and material-colour relationships. [...]

In these works chromatic fantasy and refined sensitivity, arranged in a precise structural order, bring the brushstrokes and pictorial matter to life in decisive and delicate spaces and lights and rhythms, expressing a constant reflection on the inevitable characteristics of reality. Constancy and appearance, the negative and the positive, fullness and emptiness; our gaze is entertained and delighted by this repertoire of perception, emotion and mind.

(Piero Dorazio, Il singolare caso di Kenenth Noland, in “Rigando dritto. Piero Dorazio Scritti 1945-2004, pp. 425-427)