Black Painting Concentric Circles

From 1968 Hotere was concerned with black paintings in which formal reduction took on a minimalist approach much influenced, as Hotere acknowledged, by the work of American painter Ad Reinhardt. In these works thin lines in cruciform shape or in circles of colour floated above a highly finished lacquered surface which was buffed to such an extent that it seemed to shimmer as the viewer moved across the field of vision.