Round resembles an unfinished painting of a bull’s-eye. After meeting Helen Frankenthaler at Black Mountain College, Kenneth Noland embraced the Abstract Expressionists’ unbridled experimentation with materials, but not their impassioned style of mark making. His work focused instead on the fundamental ways materials could be utilized. He achieved this by thinning paint and by using untreated, unstretched canvases. Noland painted only what he deemed essential to express the fundamental qualities of the materials. This effort toward reduction aligned him with other painters and sculptors moving towards a more simplified approach, anticipating Minimalism.