Bridget Riley b.London 1931-
Bridget Riley is considered the quintessential exponent of Op Art, an art that exploits the fallibility of the human eye.
Born in Norwood, south London, part of her childhood was spent in Cornwall a county renowned for its unique quality of light and colour. She first studied art at Goldsmiths graduating to the Royal College of Art. Her interest in the pointillism of Georges Seurat and subsequent landscapes produced in that style led to a fascination with optical effects which was to evolve into the stark black and white works that evoke strong sensations of movement for which she is still best known today.
Her first completely abstract work was painted in 1961. During the following year she held her first solo show at Gallery One in London. In 1965 she participated in The Responsive Eye at MoMA, New York, the first major review
of Op Art.
Sequences of coloured greys were introduced and in 1968 at the 34th Venice Biennale she won the International Prize for painting. Not only was she the first English artist to receive this accolade but also the first woman. By 1970 the full range of colours had entered Bridget Riley’s work.
She is not a prolific printmaker as prints have never been central to her art. Often she has published on her own initiative to research into some visual aspect of her painting usually when she has just embarked on a change of direction. The medium of choice has been screenprint as this it lays down rich layers of pigment.
Over the years her work has lost none of its full-on optical abstraction yet its rhythms and atmosphere can be related to nature as it explores the human sensation of sight.