Bridget Riley - About Lilac for Sale

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About Lilac, 2007

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About The Work

Bridget Riley’s intricate, stylish geometric abstractions helped pioneer the Op Art movement in the 1960s. The British painter arrayed colorful shapes across her canvases in a way that induced the appearance of vibration or movement; such optical effects gave Op Art its name. Though Riley created some black-and-white canvases early in her career, she is better known for compositions that feature jubilant hues. Riley studied at Goldsmiths’ College and the Royal College of Art and worked briefly in advertising before transitioning to full-time artmaking. She has exhibited in London, New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Hong Kong, among many other cities. Her work belongs in the collections of institutions including Arts Council England, the Centre Pompidou, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Tate, and the Stedelijk Museum.

Courtesy of Lougher Contemporary

About Bridget Riley

A pioneer of the Op Art movement of the 1960s and one of the most significant artists working today, Bridget Riley’s dedication to the interaction of form and color has led to a continued exploration of perception. From the early 1960s, she has used elementary shapes such as lines, circles, curves, and squares to create visual experiences that actively engage the viewer, at times triggering optical sensations of vibration and movement. Her earliest black-and-white compositions offer impressions of several other pigments, while ensuing, multi-chromatic works present color as an active component. Although abstract, her practice is closely linked with nature, which she understands to be “the dynamism of visual forces—an event rather than an appearance.”

Riley’s practice, which first achieved widespread international acclaim with the 1965 exhibition "The Responsive Eye" at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, has returned to her now iconic stripe motif at crucial moments in her career. Demonstrating their significance for her overall engagement with form, colour, and perception, the stripes’ visual variety is achieved by changes in colour, weight, rhythm, and density thus producing varied palettes, tempos, and sizes. Inspired by painters of the past including Georges Seurat, Paul Cézanne, and Henri Matisse, Riley’s abstract innovations offer a groundbreaking way of looking.

Riley has had solo exhibitions at institutions worldwide including the National Gallery in London, Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, Museum Haus Esters and Kaiser Wilhelm Museum in Krefeld, Germany, and Dia Center for the Arts in New York. In 1974, Riley was made a CBE (Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) and in 1999, appointed the Companion of Honour. In 1968, she won the International Prize for Painting at the Venice Biennale and in 2003, the artist was awarded the Praemium Imperiale in Tokyo.

Courtesy of David Zwirner