op art Op art, short for optical art, is a style of visual art that uses optical illusions. Op artworks are abstract, with many better-known pieces created in black and white. Typically, they give the viewer the impression of movement, hidden images ...

Cornwall Cornwall (; kw, Kernow ) is a historic county and ceremonial county in South West England. It is recognised as one of the Celtic nations, and is the homeland of the Cornish people. Cornwall is bordered to the north and west by the Atlantic ...

Vaucluse Vaucluse (; oc, Vauclusa, label= Provençal or ) is a department in the southeastern French region of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur. It had a population of 561,469 as of 2019.Norwood, London. Her father, John Fisher Riley, originally from

Yorkshire Yorkshire ( ; abbreviated Yorks), formally known as the County of York, is a Historic counties of England, historic county in northern England and by far the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its large area in comparison with other Eng ...

, had been an Army officer. He was a printer by trade and owned his own business. In 1938, he relocated the printing business, together with his family, to

Lincolnshire Lincolnshire (abbreviated Lincs.) is a county in the East Midlands of England, with a long coastline on the North Sea to the east. It borders Norfolk to the south-east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south-west, Leicestershire ...

. At the beginning of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, her father, a member of the Territorial Army, was mobilised, and Riley, together with her mother and sister Sally, moved to a cottage in

Cornwall Cornwall (; kw, Kernow ) is a historic county and ceremonial county in South West England. It is recognised as one of the Celtic nations, and is the homeland of the Cornish people. Cornwall is bordered to the north and west by the Atlantic ...

.Mary Blume (19 June 2008)
Bridget Riley retrospective opens in Paris
''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

''. The cottage, not far from the sea near

Padstow Padstow (; kw, Lannwedhenek) is a town, civil parishes in England, civil parish and fishing port on the north coast of Cornwall, England. The town is situated on the west bank of the River Camel estuary approximately northwest of Wadebridge, ...

, was shared with an aunt who was a former student at

Goldsmiths' College Goldsmiths, University of London, officially the Goldsmiths' College, is a constituent research university of the University of London in England. It was originally founded in 1891 as The Goldsmiths' Technical and Recreative Institute by the Wor ...

, London. Primary education came in the form of irregular talks and lectures by non-qualified or retired teachers.Kudielka, R., "Chronology" in ''Bridget Riley: Paintings and Related Work'', London: National Gallery Company Limited, 2010, pp. 67–72. . She attended

Cheltenham Ladies' College Cheltenham Ladies' College is an independent boarding and day school for girls aged 11 to 18 in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England. Consistently ranked as one of the top all-girls' schools nationally, the school was established in 1853 to pr ...

(1946–1948) and then studied art at Goldsmiths' College (1949–52), and later at the

Royal College of Art The Royal College of Art (RCA) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom, with campuses in South Kensington, Battersea and White City. It is the only entirely postgraduate art and design university in the United Kingdom. It offe ...

(1952–55).Chilvers, Ian & Glaves-Smith, John eds., ''Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Art'', Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. pp. 598–599 Between 1956 and 1958, she nursed her father, who had been involved in a serious car crash. She suffered a breakdown due to the deterioration of her father's health. After this she worked in a glassware shop. She eventually joined the

J. Walter Thompson J. Walter Thompson (JWT) was an advertisement holding company incorporated in 1896 by American advertising pioneer James Walter Thompson. The company was acquired in 1987 by multinational holding company WPP plc, and in November 2018, WPP merge ...

advertising agency, as an illustrator, where she worked part-time until 1962. The

Whitechapel Gallery The Whitechapel Gallery is a public art gallery in Whitechapel on the north side of Whitechapel High Street, in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. The original building, designed by Charles Harrison Townsend, opened in 1901 as one of the fir ...

exhibition of

Jackson Pollock Paul Jackson Pollock (; January 28, 1912August 11, 1956) was an American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. He was widely noticed for his " drip technique" of pouring or splashing liquid household paint onto a hor ...

in the winter of 1958 had an impact on her. Her early work was figurative and semi-impressionist. Between 1958 and 1959, her work at the advertising agency showed her adoption of a style of painting based on the

pointillist Pointillism (, ) is a technique of painting in which small, distinct dots of color are applied in patterns to form an image. Georges Seurat and Paul Signac developed the technique in 1886, branching from Impressionism. The term "Pointillism" wa ...

technique.Bridget Riley

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

, New York. Around 1960, she began to develop her signature

Op Art Op art, short for optical art, is a style of visual art that uses optical illusions. Op artworks are abstract, with many better-known pieces created in black and white. Typically, they give the viewer the impression of movement, hidden images ...

style consisting of black and white geometric patterns that explore the dynamism of sight and produce a disorienting effect on the eye and produces movement and colour. In the summer of 1960, she toured Italy with her mentor Maurice de Sausmarez, and the two friends visited the

Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...

with its large exhibition of

Futurist Futurists (also known as futurologists, prospectivists, foresight practitioners and horizon scanners) are people whose specialty or interest is futurology or the attempt to systematically explore predictions and possibilities abou ...

works. Early in her career, Riley worked as an art teacher for children from 1957 to 1958 at the Convent of the Sacred Heart, Harrow (now known as Sacred Heart Language College). At the Convent of the Sacred Heart, she began a basic design course. Later she worked at the Loughborough School of Art (1959),

Hornsey College of Art Hornsey College of Art (a.k.a. Hornsey School of Art) was a college in Crouch End in the London Borough of Haringey, England. The HCA was "an iconic British art institution, renowned for its experimental and progressive approach to art and design ...

, and Croydon College of Art (1962–64). In 1961, she and her partner Peter Sedgley visited the

Vaucluse Vaucluse (; oc, Vauclusa, label= Provençal or ) is a department in the southeastern French region of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur. It had a population of 561,469 as of 2019.Victor Musgrave of Gallery One held her first solo exhibition. In 1968, Riley, with Sedgley and the journalist Peter Townsend, created the artists' organisation

SPACE Space is the boundless three-dimensional extent in which objects and events have relative position and direction. In classical physics, physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually consider ...

(Space Provision Artistic Cultural and Educational), with the goal of providing artists large and affordable studio space.

Seurat's way of seeing

Riley's mature style, developed during the 1960s, was influenced by sources like the French

Neo-Impressionist Neo-Impressionism is a term coined by French art critic Félix Fénéon in 1886 to describe an art movement founded by Georges Seurat. Seurat's most renowned masterpiece, '' A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte'', marked the beginn ...

artist

Georges Seurat Georges Pierre Seurat ( , , ; 2 December 1859 – 29 March 1891) was a French post-Impressionist artist. He devised the painting techniques known as chromoluminarism and pointillism and used conté crayon for drawings on paper with a rough su ...

. In 2015–6, the

Courtauld Gallery The Courtauld Gallery () is an art museum in Somerset House, on the Strand in central London. It houses the collection of the Courtauld Institute of Art, a self-governing college of the University of London specialising in the study of the hist ...

, in its exhibition ''Bridget Riley: Learning from Seurat'', made the case for how Seurat's

pointillism Pointillism (, ) is a technique of painting in which small, distinct dots of color are applied in patterns to form an image. Georges Seurat and Paul Signac developed the technique in 1886, branching from Impressionism. The term "Pointillism" wa ...

influenced her towards abstract painting. As a young artist in 1959, Riley saw '' The Bridge at Courbevoie'', owned by the Courtauld, and decided to paint a copy. The resulting work has hung in Riley's studio ever since, barring its loan to the gallery for the exhibition, demonstrating in the opinion of the art critic Jonathan Jones "how crucial" Seurat was to her approach to art. Riley described her copy of Seurat's painting as a "tool", interpreted by Jones as meaning that she, like Seurat, practised art "as an optical science"; in his view, Riley "really did forge her optical style by studying Seurat", making the exhibition a real meeting of old and new. Jones comments that Riley investigated Seurat's pointillism by painting from a book illustration of Seurat's ''Bridge'' at an expanded scale to work out how his technique made use of complementary colours, and went on to create pointillist landscapes of her own, such as ''Pink Landscape'' (1960), painted soon after her Seurat study and portraying the "sun-filled hills of

Tuscany Tuscany ( ; it, Toscana ) is a Regions of Italy, region in central Italy with an area of about and a population of about 3.8 million inhabitants. The regional capital is Florence (''Firenze''). Tuscany is known for its landscapes, history, art ...

" (and shown in the exhibition poster) which Jones writes could readily be taken for a post-impressionist original. In his view, Riley shares Seurat's "joy for life", a simple but radical delight in colour and seeing.

Work

It was during this period that Riley began to paint the black and white works for which she first became known. They present a great variety of geometric forms that produce sensations of movement or colour. In the early 1960s, her works were said to induce a variety of sensations in viewers, from seasickness to the feeling of

sky diving Parachuting, including also skydiving, is a method of transiting from a high point in the atmosphere to the surface of Earth with the aid of gravity, involving the control of speed during the descent using a parachute or parachutes. For ...

. From 1961 to 1964, she worked with the contrast of black and white, occasionally introducing tonal scales of grey. Works in this style comprised her first 1962 solo show at Musgrave's Gallery One, as well as numerous subsequent shows. For example, in ''Fall'', a single perpendiculars curve is repeated to create a field of varying optical frequencies. Visually, these works relate to many concerns of the period: a perceived need for audience participation (this relates them to the

Happening A happening is a performance, event, or situation art, usually as performance art. The term was first used by Allan Kaprow during the 1950s to describe a range of art-related events. History Origins Allan Kaprow first coined the term "happen ...

s, which were common in this era), challenges to the notion of the mind-body duality which led

Aldous Huxley Aldous Leonard Huxley (26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963) was an English writer and philosopher. He wrote nearly 50 books, both novels and non-fiction works, as well as wide-ranging essays, narratives, and poems. Born into the prominent Huxley ...

to experiment with

hallucinogenic drugs Hallucinogens are a large, diverse class of psychoactive drugs that can produce altered states of consciousness characterized by major alterations in thought, mood, and perception as well as other changes. Most hallucinogens can be categorize ...

; concerns with a tension between a scientific future which might be very beneficial or might lead to a

nuclear war Nuclear warfare, also known as atomic warfare, is a theoretical military conflict or prepared political strategy that deploys nuclear weaponry. Nuclear weapons are weapons of mass destruction; in contrast to conventional warfare, nuclear w ...

; and fears about the loss of genuine individual experience in a Brave New World. Her paintings since 1961, have been executed by assistants. She meticulously plans her composition's design with preparatory drawings and collage techniques; her assistants paint the final canvases with great precision under her instruction.Practising Abstraction, Bridget Riley talking to Michael Craig-Martin in ''Bridget Riley, Dialogues on Art'', p. 62 Riley began investigating colour in 1967, the year in which she produced her first stripe painting. Following a major retrospective in the early 1970s, Riley began travelling extensively. After a trip to

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...

in the early 1980s, where she was inspired by colourful

hieroglyphic Egyptian hieroglyphs (, ) were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt, used for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with some 1,000 distinct characters.There were about 1,00 ...

decoration, Riley began to explore colour and contrast.Things to Enjoy, Bridget Riley, talking to Bryan Robertson in ''Bridget Riley, Dialogues on Art'', p. 87 In some works, lines of colour are used to create a shimmering effect, while in others the canvas is filled with

tessellating A tessellation or tiling is the covering of a surface, often a plane, using one or more geometric shapes, called ''tiles'', with no overlaps and no gaps. In mathematics, tessellation can be generalized to higher dimensions and a variety of ge ...

patterns. Typical of these later colourful works is ''Shadow Play''. Some works are titled after particular dates, others after specific locations (for instance, Les Bassacs, the village near

Saint-Saturnin-lès-Apt Saint-Saturnin-lès-Apt (, literally ''Saint-Saturnin near Apt''; Provençal: ''Sant Savornin d’Ate'') is a commune in the Vaucluse department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region in southeastern France. Twin towns * Castelfranco di So ...

in the south of France where Riley has a studio). Following a visit to Egypt in 1980–81, Riley created colours in what she called her 'Egyptian palette' and produced works such as the ''Ka'' and ''Ra'' series, which capture the spirit of the country, ancient and modern, and reflect the colours of the Egyptian landscape. Invoking the sensorial memory of her travels, the paintings produced between 1980 and 1985 exhibit Riley's free reconstruction of the restricted chromatic palette discovered abroad. In 1983, for the first time in fifteen years, Riley returned to Venice to once again study the paintings that form the basis of European colourism. Towards the end of the 1980s, Riley's work underwent a dramatic change with the reintroduction of the diagonal in the form of a sequence of

parallelogram In Euclidean geometry, a parallelogram is a simple (non- self-intersecting) quadrilateral with two pairs of parallel sides. The opposite or facing sides of a parallelogram are of equal length and the opposite angles of a parallelogram are of equa ...

s used to disrupt and animate the vertical stripes that had characterized her previous paintings. In ''Delos'' (1983), for example, blue, turquoise, and emerald hues alternate with rich yellows, reds and white.

Murals

Bridget-riley-bolt-of-colour-1-chinati-foundatin-marfa-texas

Riley has painted temporary murals for the

Tate Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...

, the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and the

National Gallery The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, in Central London, England. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The current Director o ...

. In 2014, the Imperial College Healthcare Charity Art Collection commissioned her to make a permanent 56-metre mural for

St Mary's Hospital, London St Mary's Hospital is an NHS hospital in Paddington, in the City of Westminster, London, founded in 1845. Since the UK's first academic health science centre was created in 2008, it has been operated by Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, wh ...

; the work was installed on the 10th floor of the hospital's Queen Elizabeth Queen Mother Wing, joining two others she had painted more than 20 years earlier. In 2017, she installed a striped mural that circumnavigated a U-shaped former army barracks at the

Chinati Foundation The Chinati Foundation/La Fundación Chinati is a contemporary art museum located in Marfa, Texas, and based upon the ideas of its founder, artist Donald Judd. Mission The specific intention of Chinati is to preserve and present to the public perm ...

in

Marfa, Texas Marfa is a city in the high desert of the Trans-Pecos in far West Texas, between the Davis Mountains and Big Bend National Park. It is the county seat of Presidio County, Texas, Presidio County, and its population as of the 2010 United States Cens ...

, that expanded on a work executed for the Royal Liverpool Hospital in 1983. Between 2017 and 2019 Riley's wall painting for the

Chinati Foundation The Chinati Foundation/La Fundación Chinati is a contemporary art museum located in Marfa, Texas, and based upon the ideas of its founder, artist Donald Judd. Mission The specific intention of Chinati is to preserve and present to the public perm ...

,

Marfa, Texas Marfa is a city in the high desert of the Trans-Pecos in far West Texas, between the Davis Mountains and Big Bend National Park. It is the county seat of Presidio County, Texas, Presidio County, and its population as of the 2010 United States Cens ...

was the artist's largest work to date and spanned six of the eight walls of the building. The mural referenced Royal Liverpool University Hospital's wall painting ''Bolt of Colour'' (1983) and revisited the artist's Egyptian palette.

On the nature and role of the artist

Riley made the following comments regarding artistic work in her lecture ''Painting Now'', 23rd William Townsend Memorial Lecture,

Slade School of Fine Art The UCL Slade School of Fine Art (informally The Slade) is the art school of University College London (UCL) and is based in London, England. It has been ranked as the UK's top art and design educational institution. The school is organised as ...

, London, 26 November 1996:

Writer and curator

Riley has written on artists from

Nicolas Poussin Nicolas Poussin (, , ; June 1594 – 19 November 1665) was the leading painter of the classical French Baroque style, although he spent most of his working life in Rome. Most of his works were on religious and mythological subjects painted for a ...

to

Bruce Nauman Bruce Nauman (born December 6, 1941) is an American artist. His practice spans a broad range of media including sculpture, photography, neon, video, drawing, printmaking, and performance. Nauman lives near Galisteo, New Mexico. Life and work ...

. She co-curated ''Piet Mondrian: From Nature to Abstraction'' (with Sean Rainbird) at the Tate Gallery in 1996. Alongside art historian Robert Kudielka, Riley also served as curator of the 2002 exhibition "

Paul Klee Paul Klee (; 18 December 1879 – 29 June 1940) was a Swiss-born German artist. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. Klee was a natural draftsman who experimented wi ...

: The Nature of Creation", an exhibition at the

Hayward Gallery The Hayward Gallery is an art gallery within the Southbank Centre in central London, England and part of an area of major arts venues on the South Bank of the River Thames. It is sited adjacent to the other Southbank Centre buildings (the Roy ...

in London in 2002. In 2010, she curated an artists choice show at the

National Gallery The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, in Central London, England. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The current Director o ...

in London, choosing large figure paintings by

Titian Tiziano Vecelli or Vecellio (; 27 August 1576), known in English as Titian ( ), was an Italians, Italian (Republic of Venice, Venetian) painter of the Renaissance, considered the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school (art), ...

,

Veronese Veronese is the Italian word denoting someone or something from Verona, Italy and may refer to: * Veronese Riddle, a popular riddle in the Middle Ages * ''Veronese'' (moth), a moth genus in the family Crambidae * Monte Veronese, an Italian chees ...

,

El Greco Domḗnikos Theotokópoulos ( el, Δομήνικος Θεοτοκόπουλος ; 1 October 1541 7 April 1614), most widely known as El Greco ("The Greek"), was a Greek painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance. "El G ...

,

Rubens Sir Peter Paul Rubens (; ; 28 June 1577 – 30 May 1640) was a Flemish artist and diplomat from the Duchy of Brabant in the Southern Netherlands (modern-day Belgium). He is considered the most influential artist of the Flemish Baroque traditio ...

, Poussin, and

Paul Cézanne Paul Cézanne ( , , ; ; 19 January 1839 – 22 October 1906) was a French artist and Post-Impressionism, Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th-century conception of artistic endeavour to a ...

.

Exhibitions

In 1965, Riley exhibited in the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

in New York City show, ''

The Responsive Eye Op art, short for optical art, is a style of visual art that uses optical illusions. Op artworks are abstract, with many better-known pieces created in black and white. Typically, they give the viewer the impression of movement, hidden images ...

'' (created by curator William C. Seitz); the exhibition which first drew worldwide attention to her work and the Op Art movement. Her painting ''Current'', 1964, was reproduced on the cover of the show's catalogue. Riley became increasingly disillusioned, however, with the exploitation of her art for commercial purposes, discovering that in the USA there was no copyright protection for artists. The first US copyright legislation was eventually passed, following an independent initiative by New York artists, in 1967. She participated in

documenta ''documenta'' is an exhibition of contemporary art which takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany. The ''documenta'' was founded by artist, teacher and curator Arnold Bode in 1955 as part of the Bundesgartenschau (Federal Horticultura ...

s IV (1968) and VI (1977). In 1968, Riley represented Great Britain in the

Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...

, where she was the first British contemporary painter, and the first woman, to be awarded the International Prize for painting. Her disciplined work lost ground to the assertive gestures of the Neo-Expressionists in the 1980s, but a 1999 show at the

Serpentine Gallery The Serpentine Galleries are two contemporary art galleries in Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park, Central London. Recently rebranded to just Serpentine, the organisation is split across Serpentine South, previously known as the Serpentine Gallery, ...

of her early paintings triggered a resurgence of interest in her optical experiments. "Bridget Riley: Reconnaissance", an exhibition of paintings from the 1960s and 1970s, was presented at Dia:Chelsea in 2000. In 2001, she participated in

Site Santa Fe SITE Santa Fe (often referred to simply as SITE) is a nonprofit contemporary arts organization based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Since its founding in 1995, SITE Santa Fe has presented 11 biennials, more than 90 contemporary art exhibitions, and wor ...

, and in 2003 the

Tate Britain Tate Britain, known from 1897 to 1932 as the National Gallery of British Art and from 1932 to 2000 as the Tate Gallery, is an art museum on Millbank in the City of Westminster in London, England. It is part of the Tate network of galleries in ...

organised a major Riley retrospective. In 2005, her work was featured at

Gallery Oldham Gallery Oldham is a free-to-view public museum and art gallery in the Cultural Quarter of central Oldham, in Greater Manchester, England. Design Designed by architects Pringle Richards Sharratt, Gallery Oldham was completed in its original for ...

. Between November 2010 and May 2011, her exhibition "Paintings and Related Work" was presented at the

National Gallery The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, in Central London, England. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The current Director o ...

, London. In June and July 2014, the retrospective show "Bridget Riley: The Stripe Paintings 1961–2014" was presented at the

David Zwirner Gallery David Zwirner Gallery is an American contemporary art gallery owned by David Zwirner. It has four gallery spaces in New York City and one each in London, Hong Kong, and Paris. History The Zwirner Gallery opened in 1993 on the ground floor of ...

in London. In July and August 2015, the retrospective show "Bridget Riley: The Curve Paintings 1961–2014" was presented at the

De La Warr Pavilion The De La Warr Pavilion is a grade I listed building, located on the seafront at Bexhill on Sea, East Sussex, on the south coast of England. The Modernist and International Style building was designed by the architects Erich Mendelsohn and Ser ...

in

Bexhill-on-Sea Bexhill-on-Sea (often shortened to Bexhill) is a seaside town and civil parish situated in the county of East Sussex in South East England. An ancient town and part of the local government district of Rother, Bexhill is home to a number of arc ...

. In November 2015, the exhibition ''Bridget Riley'' opened at David Zwirner in New York. The show features paintings and works on paper by the artist from 1981 to present; the fully illustrated catalogue features an essay by the art historian Richard Shiff and biographical notes compiled by Robert Kudielka. A retrospective exhibition at the

Scottish National Gallery The Scottish National Gallery (formerly the National Gallery of Scotland) is the national art gallery of Scotland. It is located on The Mound in central Edinburgh, close to Princes Street. The building was designed in a neoclassical style by W ...

, in partnership with the

Hayward Gallery The Hayward Gallery is an art gallery within the Southbank Centre in central London, England and part of an area of major arts venues on the South Bank of the River Thames. It is sited adjacent to the other Southbank Centre buildings (the Roy ...

, ran from June to September 2019. It showed early paintings and drawings, black-and-white works of the 1960s, and studies that reveal her working methods. This major exhibition of her work, spanning her 70-year career, was also shown at

Hayward Gallery The Hayward Gallery is an art gallery within the Southbank Centre in central London, England and part of an area of major arts venues on the South Bank of the River Thames. It is sited adjacent to the other Southbank Centre buildings (the Roy ...

from October 2019 to January 2020.

Public collections

*

Abbot Hall Art Gallery Abbot Hall Art Gallery is a museum and gallery in Kendal, England. Abbot Hall was built in 1759 by Colonel George Wilson, the second son of Daniel Wilson of Dallam Tower, a large house and country estate nearby. It was built on the site of the o ...

, Kendal *

Arts Council Collection The arts are a very wide range of human practices of creative expression, storytelling and cultural participation. They encompass multiple diverse and plural modes of thinking, doing and being, in an extremely broad range of media. Both hi ...

, London * British Council Collection, London *

Ferens Art Gallery The Ferens Art Gallery is an art gallery in the English city of Kingston upon Hull. The site and money for the gallery were donated to the city by Thomas Ferens, after whom it is named. The architects were S. N. Cooke and E. C. Davie ...

, Hull *

Fitzwilliam Museum The Fitzwilliam Museum is the art and antiquities museum of the University of Cambridge. It is located on Trumpington Street opposite Fitzwilliam Street in central Cambridge. It was founded in 1816 under the will of Richard FitzWilliam, 7th Vis ...

, Cambridge * Glasgow Museums Resource Centre, Glasgow *

Government Art Collection The Government Art Collection (GAC) is the collection of artworks owned by the UK government and administered by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). The GAC's artworks are used to decorate major government buildings in t ...

, London *

Leeds Art Gallery Leeds Art Gallery in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England, is a gallery, part of the Leeds Museums & Galleries group, whose collection of 20th-century British Art was designated by the British government in 1997 as a collection "of national importance" ...

* Maclaurin Art Gallery at Rozelle House,

Ayr Ayr (; sco, Ayr; gd, Inbhir Àir, "Mouth of the River Ayr") is a town situated on the southwest coast of Scotland. It is the administrative centre of the South Ayrshire council area and the historic county town of Ayrshire. With a population ...

*

Manchester Art Gallery Manchester Art Gallery, formerly Manchester City Art Gallery, is a publicly owned art museum on Mosley Street in Manchester city centre. The main gallery premises were built for a learned society in 1823 and today its collection occupies three c ...

*

Morley College Morley College is a specialist adult education and further education college in London, England. The college has three main campuses, one in Waterloo on the South Bank, and two in West London namely in North Kensington and in Chelsea, the lat ...

, London *

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen Municipal Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen () is an art museum in Rotterdam in the Netherlands. The name of the museum is derived from the two most important collectors of Frans Jacob Otto Boijmans and Daniël George van Beuningen. It is located at ...

,

Rotterdam Rotterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Rotte'') is the second largest city and municipality in the Netherlands. It is in the province of South Holland, part of the North Sea mouth of the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta, via the ''"N ...

*

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston The Museum of Fine Arts (often abbreviated as MFA Boston or MFA) is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the 20th-largest art museum in the world, measured by public gallery area. It contains 8,161 paintings and more than 450,000 works ...

*

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

, New York *

National Museum Cardiff National Museum Cardiff ( cy, Amgueddfa Genedlaethol Caerdydd) is a museum and art gallery in Cardiff, Wales. The museum is part of the wider network of Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales. Entry is kept free by a grant from the Welsh Go ...

,

National Museum Wales National may refer to: Common uses * Nation or country ** Nationality – a ''national'' is a person who is subject to a nation, regardless of whether the person has full rights as a citizen Places in the United States * National, Maryland, ce ...

*

Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art is an art museum in Kansas City, Missouri, known for its encyclopedic collection of art from nearly every continent and culture, and especially for its extensive collection of Asian art. In 2007, ''Time'' magaz ...

, Kansas City * Ruth Borchard Collection *

Southampton City Art Gallery The Southampton City Art Gallery is an art gallery in Southampton, southern England. It is located in the Civic Centre on Commercial Road. The gallery opened in 1939 with much of the initial funding from the gallery coming from two bequests, on ...

*

Tate Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...

, London *

University of Warwick The University of Warwick ( ; abbreviated as ''Warw.'' in post-nominal letters) is a public research university on the outskirts of Coventry between the West Midlands (county), West Midlands and Warwickshire, England. The university was founded i ...

*

Walker Art Gallery The Walker Art Gallery is an art gallery in Liverpool, which houses one of the largest art collections in England outside London. It is part of the National Museums Liverpool group. History of the Gallery The Walker Art Gallery's collection ...

, Liverpool * Whitworth, Manchester

Influence

Artists

Ross Bleckner Ross Bleckner (born May 12, 1949) is an American artist. He currently lives and works in New York City. His artistic focus is on painting, and he held his first solo exhibition in 1975. Some of his art work reflected on the AIDS epidemic. Earl ...

and

Philip Taaffe Philip Taaffe (born 1955) is an American artist, who has shown his works all around the world. His work sometimes blended motifs from multiple cultures. Biography Taaffe was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey and studied at the Cooper Union in Ne ...

made paintings paying homage to the work of Riley in the 80s. In 2013, Riley claimed that a wall-sized, black-and-white checkerboard work by

Tobias Rehberger Tobias Rehberger (born June 2, 1966) is a German sculptor, born in Esslingen am Neckar. He studied under Thomas Bayrle and Martin Kippenberger at the Stadelschule in Frankfurt am Main, where he now teaches. Work Rehberger works in the wider ...

plagiarised her painting ''Movement in Squares'' and asked for it to be removed from display at the

Berlin State Library The Berlin State Library (german: Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin; officially abbreviated as ''SBB'', colloquially ''Stabi'') is a universal library in Berlin, Germany and a property of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. It is one of the larg ...

's reading room.Julia Michalska (15 January 2014)
Agreement reached in plagiarism row between artists
''

The Art Newspaper ''The Art Newspaper'' is a monthly print publication, with daily updates online, founded in 1990 and based in London and New York City. It covers news of the visual arts as they are affected by international politics and economics, developments ...

''.

Recognition

In 1963, Riley was awarded the AICA Critics Prize as well as the John Moores, Liverpool Open Section Prize. A year later, she received a Peter Stuyvesant Foundation Travel bursary. In 1968, she received an International Painting Prize at the

Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...

. In 1974, she was named a

Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...

. Riley has been given honorary doctorates by

Oxford Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

(1993) and

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

(1995). In 2003, she was awarded the

Praemium Imperiale Prince Takamatsu The Praemium Imperiale ( ja, 高松宮殿下記念世界文化賞, Takamatsu-no-miya Denka Kinen Sekai Bunka-shō, World Culture Prize in Memory of His Imperial Highness Prince Takamatsu) is an international art prize inaugura ...

, and, in 1998, she became one of only 65

Companions of Honour The Order of the Companions of Honour is an order of the Commonwealth realms. It was founded on 4 June 1917 by King George V as a reward for outstanding achievements. Founded on the same date as the Order of the British Empire, it is sometimes ...

in Britain. As a board member of the

National Gallery The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, in Central London, England. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The current Director o ...

in the 1980s, she blocked

Margaret Thatcher Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher (; 13 October 19258 April 2013) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party (UK), Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. S ...

's plan to give an adjoining piece of property to developers and thus helped ensure the eventual construction of the museum's Sainsbury Wing. Riley has also received the

Goslarer Kaiserring Since 1975, the Goslarer Kaiserring award has been given, by the city of Goslar, to a distinguished international artist of modern and contemporary art. The award is for artists whose work has given the contemporary art significant impetus. The pri ...

of the city of

Goslar Goslar (; Eastphalian: ''Goslär'') is a historic town in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is the administrative centre of the district of Goslar and located on the northwestern slopes of the Harz mountain range. The Old Town of Goslar and the Mines ...

in 2009 and the 12th

Rubens Prize Sir Peter Paul Rubens (; ; 28 June 1577 – 30 May 1640) was a Flemish artist and diplomat from the Duchy of Brabant in the Southern Netherlands (modern-day Belgium). He is considered the most influential artist of the Flemish Baroque traditio ...

of

Siegen Siegen () is a city in Germany, in the south Westphalian part of North Rhine-Westphalia North Rhine-Westphalia (german: Nordrhein-Westfalen, ; li, Noordrien-Wesfale ; nds, Noordrhien-Westfalen; ksh, Noodrhing-Wäßßfaale), commonly sho ...

in 2012. Also in 2012, she became the first woman to receive the , the Dutch art prize recognising the use of colour.

Philanthropy

Riley is a Patron of

Paintings in Hospitals Paintings in Hospitals is an arts in health charity in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1959, the charity's services include the provision of artwork loans, art projects and art workshops to health and social care organisations. The charity's acti ...

, a charity established in 1959 to provide art for health and social care in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Between 1987 and 2014, she created three murals across the eighth, ninth and tenth floors of the Queen Elizabeth Queen Mother Wing, St Mary's Hospital, London. In 2017, alongside

Yoko Ono Yoko Ono ( ; ja, 小野洋子, Ono Yōko, usually spelled in katakana ; born February 18, 1933) is a Japanese multimedia artist, singer, songwriter, and peace activist. Her work also encompasses performance art and filmmaking. Ono grew up i ...

and

Tracey Emin Tracey Karima Emin, Order of the British Empire, CBE, Associate of the Royal Academy, RA (; born 3 July 1963) is a British artist known for her autobiographical and confessional artwork. Emin produces work in a variety of media including drawi ...

, Riley donated artworks to an auction to raise money for

Modern Art Oxford Modern Art Oxford is an art gallery established in 1965 in Oxford, England. From 1965 to 2002, it was called The Museum of Modern Art, Oxford. The gallery presents exhibitions of modern and contemporary art. It has a national and internationa ...

.

Art market

In 2006, her ''Untitled (Diagonal Curve)'' (1966), a black-and-white canvas of dizzying curves, was bought by

Jeffrey Deitch Jeffrey Deitch (pronounced ''DIE-tch'';Mike Boehm (January 12, 2010)L.A.'s MOCA picks art dealer Jeffrey Deitch as director''Los Angeles Times''. born 1952) is an American art dealer and curator. He is best known for his gallery Deitch Projects ( ...

at

Sotheby's Sotheby's () is a British-founded American multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine and decorative art, jewellery, and collectibles. It has 80 locations in 40 countries, and ...

for $2.1 million, nearly three times its $730,000 high estimate and also a record for the artist. In February 2008, the artist's dotted canvas ''Static 2'' (1966) brought £1,476,500 ($2.9 million), far exceeding its £900,000 ($1.8 million) high estimate, at

Christie's Christie's is a British auction house founded in 1766 by James Christie (auctioneer), James Christie. Its main premises are on King Street, St James's in London, at Rockefeller Center in New York City and at Alexandra House in Hong Kong. It is ...

in London. ''Chant 2'' (1967), part of the trio shown in the

Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...

, went to a private American collector for £2,561,250 ($5.1 million), in July 2008, at Sotheby's.

Bibliography

*''Bridget Riley: The Stripe Paintings 1961–2014'' (New York: David Zwirner Books, 2014). Texts by Robert Kudielka, Paul Moorhouse, and Richard Shiff. * ''Bridget Riley: The Stripe Paintings 1961–2012'' (London:

Ridinghouse Ridinghouse is a British book publisher specialising in art. Ridinghouse’s publications are distributed by Cornerhouse in the UK and Europe, and by RAM Publications + Distribution, Inc. in North America. Company history Ridinghouse was found ...

; Berlin: Holzwarth Publications and Galerie Max Hetzler, 2013). Texts by John Elderfield, Robert Kudielka and Paul Moorhouse. * ''Bridget Riley: Works 1960–1966'' (London: Ridinghouse, 2012). Bridget Riley in conversation with

David Sylvester Anthony David Bernard Sylvester (21 September 1924 – 19 June 2001) was a British art critic and curator. Although he received no formal education in the arts, during his long career he was influential in promoting modern artists, in particula ...

(1967) and with Maurice de Sausmarez (1967). * ''Bridget Riley: Complete Prints 1962–2012'' (London: Ridinghouse, 2012). Essays by Lynn MacRitchie and Craig Hartley; edited by Karsten Schubert. * ''The Eye's Mind: Bridget Riley. Collected Writings 1965–1999'' (London:

Thames & Hudson Thames & Hudson (sometimes T&H for brevity) is a publisher of illustrated books in all visually creative categories: art, architecture, design, photography, fashion, film, and the performing arts. It also publishes books on archaeology, history, ...

,

Serpentine Gallery The Serpentine Galleries are two contemporary art galleries in Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park, Central London. Recently rebranded to just Serpentine, the organisation is split across Serpentine South, previously known as the Serpentine Gallery, ...

and

De Montfort University De Montfort University Leicester (DMU) is a public university in the city of Leicester, England. It was established in accordance with the Further and Higher Education Act in 1992 as a degree awarding body. The name De Montfort University was tak ...

, 1999). Includes conversations with Alex Farquharson, Mel Gooding, Vanya Kewley, Robert Kudielka, and David Thompson. Edited by Robert Kudielka. * ''Bridget Riley: Paintings from the 60s and 70s'' (London: Serpentine Gallery, 1999). With texts by Lisa Corrin, Robert Kudielka, and Frances Spalding. * ''Bridget Riley: Selected Paintings 1961–1999'' (Düsseldorf: Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen; Ostfildern: Cantz Publishers, 1999). With texts by Michael Krajewski, Robert Kudielka, Bridget Riley, Raimund Stecker, and conversations with Ernst H. Gombrich and

Michael Craig-Martin Sir Michael Craig-Martin (born 28 August 1941) is an Irish-born contemporary art, contemporary conceptual artist and painter. He is known for fostering and adopting the Young British Artists, many of whom he taught, and for his conceptual artw ...

. * ''Bridget Riley: Works 1961–1998'' (Kendal, Cumbria: Abbot Hall Art Gallery and Museum, 1998). A conversation with Isabel Carlisle. * ''Bridget Riley: Dialogues on Art'' (London: Zwemmer, 1995). Conversations with

Michael Craig-Martin Sir Michael Craig-Martin (born 28 August 1941) is an Irish-born contemporary art, contemporary conceptual artist and painter. He is known for fostering and adopting the Young British Artists, many of whom he taught, and for his conceptual artw ...

, Andrew Graham Dixon, Ernst H. Gombrich, Neil MacGregor, and Bryan Robertson. Edited by Robert Kudielka and with an introduction by Richard Shone. * ''Bridget Riley: Paintings and Related Work'' (London: National Gallery Company Limited, 2010). Text by Colin Wiggins, Michael Bracewell, Marla Prather and Robert Kudielka. . * 'Bridget Riley, Op art and the Sixties' (Thames and Hudson 2004), Frances Follin

References

External links

*
The Pace GalleryOngoing exhibitions of Bridget RileyBridget Riley exhibition at Abbot Hall Art Gallery, 1998-9
* ttp://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n19/rile03_.html "At the end of my pencil" article by Bridget Riley, ''London Review of Books''br>Slideshow of paintings in Bridget Riley's Museum für Gegenwartskunst retrospective, 2012Exhibition of Bridget Riley's work at Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu, Christchurch, New Zealand, 2017Interview with Bridget Riley, 1978 May 10

Archives of American Art The Archives of American Art is the largest collection of primary resources documenting the history of the visual arts in the United States. More than 20 million items of original material are housed in the Archives' research centers in Washingt ...

, Smithsonian Institution {{DEFAULTSORT:Riley, Bridget 1931 births Living people 20th-century English painters 21st-century English painters 20th-century English women artists 21st-century English women artists Alumni of Goldsmiths, University of London Alumni of Loughborough University Alumni of the Royal College of Art British abstract artists British contemporary painters British women curators Commanders of the Order of the British Empire English contemporary artists English printmakers English women painters Members of the Academy of Arts, Berlin Members of the Order of the Companions of Honour Op art Painters from London People educated at Cheltenham Ladies' College People from Lambeth People from Vaucluse Women printmakers