This vibrant acrylic on paper, completed in 1979 and fantastically mounted and framed, measures and is an incredible example of KVY's ouvre.
Young (1933-2017) was born in Louisville, Kentucky, and moved to Washington, DC in 1964 where he associated with Howard Mehring, Thomas Downing, Alma Thomas and Sam Gilliam, among other Washington Color School artists. He is known for experimenting with color, space and soft-edged organic forms working in acrylics on unprimed canvases and on paper. A love for jazz influenced the movement and vitality of his work. His early paintings are distinguished by floating orb motifs, a fusion of brilliant colors held together in molecular suspension. Young described his artistic philosophy as “bringing order out of chaos.”
I think this painting demonstrates the influence of his friendship with Sam Gilliam in particular, and its rhythmically stippled landscape of color sets almost like a jazz melody. Young's canvases are where he most often explored the development of his orb structures that became a signature mark for him, not unlike Kenneth Noland's targets or Thomas Downing's dots. But his works on paper seem to be perfect playgrounds for his color fusion and dancing tempo.
In 1973 Young was recognized as a prominent Washington Color painter with a solo exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Young’s work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions including: Contemporary Black American Artists, Arts and Industry Building, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC (1969); Black Artists / South, Huntsville Museum of Art, Huntsville, AL (1979); African American Contemporary Art; Museo Civico D'Arte Contemporanea Di Gibellina, Palermo, Sicily (1990); Withinsight: Visual Territories of Thirty Artists; Western States Arts Federation, Santa Fe, NM (1994); African American Art: Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights Era, and Beyond, Smithsonian American Art Museum, traveling exhibition (2015). Young’s paintings are in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Art; Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Katzen Art Center in Washington, DC.
