Bridget Riley

Bridget Riley (b. 1931) is a pioneering British artist known for her groundbreaking work in the Op Art movement, which explores the optical effects of colour, pattern, and perception. Born in 1931, Riley gained prominence in the 1960s for her dynamic, geometric compositions that often create a sense of movement and illusion when viewed.

Her signature use of bold, repetitive patterns and contrasting colours challenges the viewer's visual perception, creating an experience of pulsating or shifting images. Riley's work goes beyond mere abstraction, offering a deep engagement with how the human eye processes and reacts to visual stimuli. Her innovative contributions to art continue to influence contemporary artists and the broader field of visual perception.

Bridget Riley's auction record was set on March 22, 2022, when her painting Gala (1974) sold for £4.36 million ($5.74 million) at Christie's in London. Gala exemplifies Riley's mastery of geometric abstraction and optical effects, characteristic of her pioneering work in the Op Art movement.

Explore our available collection of Bridget Riley artwork and discover the hypnotic and rhythmic world of this renowned artist.

Bridget Riley Biography

Born in South London in 1931, Bridget Riley’s practice extends across painting and
printmaking in which she explores perception, colour relationships, and the
way in which we see.

Riley began her technical training at
Goldsmith’s College in 1949, later enrolling at the Royal College of Art in
1955.

Early in her career, Riley was profoundly affected by
the work of Jackson Pollock whose Abstract Expressionist canvases she viewed
at an exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1958, and Georges
Seurat.

Struggling with her artistic identity, Riley
considered giving up art altogether until she painted The Kiss, 1961, a
reductive composition showing two black forms on the verge of
‘kissing’.

In that moment, Riley established her artistic
identity, founding an ordered, non-figurative visual language that utilises
optical and perspectival effects to convey nature, emotion and human
sensation.

Riley’s earliest works in the 1960s remained
monochromatic, before she started exploring the effects of colour in various
formats: ‘stripes’ (1967-73), ‘curves’ (1974-80), ‘fragments’ (1988-92).
Riley continues to revisit these formats in different iterations,
simultaneously producing a comprehensive body of graphic
work.

Riley was included in the 1965 exhibition, The
Responsive Eye, at MoMA, New York, and later became the first female artist
to represent Great Britain at the Venice Biennale in 1968, also becoming the
first woman to win the International Prize for
Painting.

Riley was the subject of major retrospectives at
Tate Britain in 2003 and most recently at the Hayward Gallery in
2019.

One of Riley’s earliest black-and-white works,
Untitled (Diagonal Curve), 1966, holds the current auction record of her
work, which stands at £4.34 million.