Bridget Riley

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Bridget Louise Riley , CH CBE (born April 24, 1931 in West Norwood , London ) is a British painter , one of the leading exponents of Op Art .

Life

Riley grew up in Cornwall and received an art education at Cheltenham Ladies' College from 1946 to 1948 . Her teacher Colin Hayes, later a tutor at the Royal College of Art in London , made sure that she was released from regular classes so that she could devote herself fully to developing her artistic talent. From 1949 to 1952 Riley attended Goldsmiths College in London and from 1952 to 1955 the Royal College of Art, where she studied Georges Seurat's work intensively and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts. After her father suffered a serious traffic accident, which she cared for for months, she worked as a glassware seller, taught children and finally joined J. Walter Thompson's advertising agency , where she mainly worked on the elaboration of the motifs for photographs. In 1960 she went on a trip to Italy, during which she dealt with Renaissance works such as those of Piero della Francesca and with Futurism .

In the same year, a teaching position brought her to Hornsey College of Art , where her first Op Art pictures were created. In 1962 Riley had her first solo exhibition at Gallery One in London, and in 1965 one - which was sold out before the opening - at Richard Feigen Gallery in New York. She participated in the exhibition The Responsive Eye at the Museum of Modern Art (1965). In 1968 she received the International Prize for Painting at the Venice Biennale . In 1967 she began to experiment with colors, initially only with gray, later with other colors. A trip to Egypt in 1981 provided impulses for her color design.

Her three studios are in Cornwall, where she lived during the Second World War , as well as in Holland Park and in the Vaucluse department . In 1983 she designed the interior of the Royal Liverpool Hospital . In the same year she designed the sets for Robert North's ballet Color Moves . She worked with Peter Sedgley on the SPACE Project , the aim of which was to set up studios for young artists.

She took part in the 4th documenta in Kassel in 1968 and was also represented as an artist at Documenta 6 in 1977.

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Her pink landscape from 1960 is based on Seurat's pointillism , is still figurative, she favors bright points over sharp forms. In Hidden Squares from 1961, in the eye of the beholder, separate areas with circles change into areas with squares.

Her pictures, called Fall and Current (1964), show black, curved lines that simulate a wave movement. The later works Cataract (1967), the Streak series ( e.g. Streak 2 , 1979) and Rill (1976) intensify the effect by means of colors.

Optical illusions continued in works such as Blaze 1 (1962), in which a concentric zigzag pattern creates the impression of a vibrating and rotating spiral. Shiver from 1964 creates a perception of a non-existent curvature by means of rows of many small, differently inclined triangles. Static 1 (1966) images are based on the effect that human perception connects loose points to form structures similar to magnetic field lines .

Pictures such as Paen (1973) show rows of vertical stripes of different colors, of which groups of stripes are constantly alternating when viewed and receding into the background. In Zing 1 (1971), red, blue and green stripes alternate in sections diagonally, like reflected light, within vertical bars so that horizontal segments appear to protrude.

Her mostly large-format works are created in a creative process that lasts several months. In doing so, she first produces small-format studies to ensure that they are effective. She mixes the colors herself, which play an important role in the effect of her later works. An already large-format prototype is created with gouache . The final picture is finally created on a canvas, which she lines, primes with acrylic paint, and finally painted by hand - sometimes with the help of assistants - with oil paint. A high level of precision is required here, as even small geometric or color inaccuracies can impair the optical effect.

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personal data
SURNAME Riley, Bridget
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Riley, Bridget Louise (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British Op Art painter
DATE OF BIRTH April 24, 1931
PLACE OF BIRTH West Norwood , London