British
Michael Kidner is a key figure of the Optical Art movement and member of the System group. He has spent much of his career developing constructive art work, employing mathematics, science & the theories of chaos to evolve his formal but playful art.

Born in Kettering, Northamptonshire, Kidner studied History and Anthropology at Cambridge University followed by Landscape Architecture at Ohio State University from 1940 to 1941. He spent 5 years in the Canadian Army, coming to London after this to study at Goldsmiths College. After a short period, he decided to leave, choosing to learn art through self teaching instead. From the early 1950s he worked as a theatre designer, moving to Paris in 1952 and taking up painting full-time from 1953. It is here that he was introduced to Cubism and became influenced by Cézanne, de Staël and later by American painters.

Michael Kidner’s first solo exhibitions were in 1959 at St Hildas College, Oxford followed by a one-man exhibition at the Grabowski Gallery, London in 1962. Other key exhibitions include being a part of the Arts Council Systems exhibition of 1972 - 73, his one man exhibition in 1984 at the Serpentine Gallery London; the Gallery Hoffman, Friedberg, Germany in 1993; CICA Galleries, New York in 1990 and the Henry Moore Foundation in 1997. In 2004 he was elected as a Royal Academician.