The Elastic Membrane. Mixed Media First edition. Signed.
Guildford, England: Sovereign Arts, 1979. A production in three parts by this ‘system artist’, contained in a wooden box with perspex cover.
The first part, a ‘Practical’, is an example of a home-made computer used to generate the images which follow (made from wood, perspex, and an elastic membrane).
The second is made up of three signed etchings and three signed lithos.
The third consists of two spiral note books:
1) a 54 pp Continuity Book, 25 x 21 cm and
2) a 72 pp facsimile of the artist’s Note Book, 20 x 17 cm – 300 signed copes, 40 proofs – the whole measures
46 x 36 x 7cm.
Kidner’s first solo exhibition was held at St Hilda’s college, Oxford in 1959 where he showed his After Image paintings. However it was not until 1965 that he became recognised as a pioneer of Op Art following the publicity surrounding the exhibition called The Responsive Eye organised by William Seitz at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Both Kidner and Bridget Riley’s work were included.
The importance of Op Art in the canon of Western art history is well-established. Artworks which explored optical reception had been created since earlier in the century, though they were usually experiments and three-dimensional work. It was Kidner’s generation which made optics the focus of painting and Kidner himself who can be said to have produced the first Op Art paintings in colour.
Without losing this rigorous, intellectual approach, Kidner manages to make his work resonate emotionally. Throughout his life, he retained an interest in unpredictable world events that provoked unplanned elements within his work but he somehow managed to intimate an underlying order through his use of form and colour.
He survived to see a major show of his work from the 1960s, 'Dreams of the World Order' at the Royal Academy in September 2009. Solo exhibitions of Kidner's work include Serpentine Gallery; Grabowski Gallery; Victoria Art Gallery, Bath; Arnolfini Gallery and Royal West of England Academy, Bristol; Henry Moore Institute, Leeds; Galerie Hubert Winter, Vienna; Betty Parsons, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Poland; and exhibitions in Rio de Janeiro, Paris, Stockholm, Helsinki and Budapest. His papers and archive were gifted to the Tate in 2010. Kidner has work in numerous public collections, including Tate; V&A; Arts Council; Government Art Collection; Contemporary Arts Society; Henry Moore Sculpture Trust; New College, Oxford; Southampton City Art Gallery; Walker Gallery, Liverpool; Gulbenkian Foundation; Sintra Museum of Modern Art, Portugal; Stuyvesant Foundation; Poznan Museum, Poland; Malmo Konsthall, Sweden; Museum of Modern Art, New York; and National Gallery of Australia. Item #16-3541
Price: $2,750.00