Kenneth Victor Young�(1933-2017) had a far-reaching career as an artist, teacher, and museum professional. After earning his bachelor�s degree in fine art from the University of Louisville in 1962, Young moved to Washington, D.C. and taught at the Duke Ellington School and the Corcoran School of Art. He had an illustrious 35-year career as an exhibition designer for the Smithsonian Institution, and his extensive travels during this time 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 colored orb motifs�imagery that attempts to bring order to chaos and that comments on the pandemonium of life.

For more than 40 years, his artworks have been shown in group and solo exhibitions in galleries and museums around the world. His one-man show at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in 1973-74 solidified his place as a significant Washington Color School painter. �Young�s paintings of the 1960s and early 1970s show rich and varied palettes,� writes Virginia K. Adams, Ph.D., in her catalog essay for the 2018 exhibition,�The Language of Abstraction: Ed Clark, Richard Franklin, and Kenneth Young�at the University of Maryland University College. �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. However, some later paintings�notably an untitled work (2000) and�Blue Nile River�(2010)�offer evidence of a turn to landscape.�

Young has a work,�Red Dance�(1969), 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.� Young�s work was included in the Smithsonian American Art Museum�s 2015 traveling exhibition and the accompanying catalogue,�African American Art: Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights Era, and Beyond, published by Skira/Rizzoli.

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 museums such as The Columbus Museum, Columbus, Georgia; The Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, Alabama; The National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; P�rez Art Museum Miami, Miami, Florida; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY.