Kenneth Victor Young (1933-2017) had a far-reaching career as an artist, teacher, and museum professional. After studying physics and earning his B.S. in Fine Art from the University of Louisville, where he met fellow student Sam Gilliam, he moved to Washington, D.C. in 1964 and began painting abstract forms with washed acrylics on unprimed canvas. Young taught at the Duke Ellington School and the Corcoran School of Art and had an illustrious 35-year career as an international exhibition designer for the Smithsonian Institution. His extensive travels helped inform his cosmic abstract style of painting. 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.�

For over 40 years, Young�s art has been shown in group and solo exhibitions around the world. His one-man show at the Corcoran Gallery in 1973-74 solidified his place as a significant Washington Color School painter, alongside artists like Tom Downing, Kenneth Noland, and Morris Louis. Describing the process in his early works, Virginia K. Adams, Ph.D., in her catalog essay for the 2018 University of Maryland exhibition, �The Language of Abstraction: Ed Clark, Richard Franklin, and Kenneth Young,� writes, �He often painted on the floor, pouring acrylic paint onto unprimed canvas and diluting it with water to make it flow and become absorbed in unpredictable patterns. Young sometimes used an airbrush to soften edges, which gave his orbs the appearance of floating�Some later paintings�notably. . .Blue Nile River�(2010)�offer evidence of a turn to landscape.�

Young's work, Red Dance (1969), is in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Art. The painting first gained attention when it was featured in �Black Art in America,� a 1970 feature written by Barbara Rose for Art in America. The article paired Young�s work with that of other young African American artists whom she deemed to show �special promise.� His painting, Untitled (1973) has been part of SAAM�s historic traveling exhibition, African American Art: Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights Era, and Beyond�(2015-present).

Young's recent exhibitions include the Luther W. Brady Gallery at the Corcoran School of Art at George Washington University, Washington, DC; Edward Tyler Nahem Fine Art, New York, NY; University of Maryland University College, Adelpi, MD; and a solo show at the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center, Washington, DC.

His works are in the collections of�The National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; P�rez Art Museum Miami, Miami, Florida; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY;�The Columbus Museum, Columbus, Georgia;�The Stanley Museum of Art, Iowa City, Iowa; and The Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, DE.

Young's work was recently acquired and installed in the lobby of the newly renovated Salamander hotel in Washington, DC.