Artist: Michael Kidner

Flowers Gallery presents from Rothko to Riley - a retrospective exhibition of early works by the late British artist Michael Kidner.

A pioneer of Optical Art, Michael Kidner is recognised as a foundational figure in British abstraction, devoting much of his career to developing work of a constructive nature. Both rational and playful, he combined visual responses to the principles of mathematics, science and chaos theories with an abiding interest in the irrational and unpredictable nature of the human condition.

Bringing together works from 1956 to 1970, the exhibition traces Kidner's evolution from his early After Image series, influenced by Abstract Expressionism and Mark Rothko's colour fields, to his later explorations of wave patterns and optical effects, rooted in chaos theory and mathematical principles.

Once I realised that my interest in colour rather than the figure or landscape could become the subject of a painting, I was off to a new start. - Michael Kidner