Bridget Riley

Bridget Riley is an abstract painter who came to prominence in the American Op Art movement of the 1960s, after her inclusion in the 1965 exhibition “The Responsive Eye” at The Museum of Modern Art. There, her black-and-white paintings—which created illusions of movement—were shown alongside works by Victor Vasarely, Frank Stella, and Ellsworth Kelly, among others. In the late ’60s, she introduced colour into her work and went on to win the Prize for Painting at the 1968 Venice Biennale. Since then her work has unfolded through numerous groups and series that engage the viewers’ perception to induce simultaneously shifting patterns of forms and changing, optical mixtures of colours. Her work is ultimately inspired by nature—“although in completely different terms,” she says, adding, “For me nature is not landscape, but the dynamism of visual forces—an event rather than an appearance.”  Her paintings reach high auction records (£4m, Christie’s, 2016), she is represented by internationally recognized galleries and collected by major museums such as the Tate and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).

The work above is one of my favourite Bridget Riley drawings with her notes and plans written in the margins.  It was displayed at the Hayward retrospective in 2019.  I also love the biggest screen print that Riley has produced, Ra Inverted, which has a place in my collection.