Bridget riley now
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Bridget Riley
Bridget Riley was born in South London in 1931. She studied at Goldsmiths College from 1949 to 1952, and at the Royal College of Art from 1952 to 1955, before going on to teach and work in an advertising agency until 1963. Her first solo exhibition was held at Gallery One in London 1962.
In 1965, Riley exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in a group show, The Responsive Eye. The exhibition drew worldwide attention to the 'Op Art' movement, and Riley's work which consisted of black and white geometric patterns. Riley's printmaking over the last 50 years has run parallel to the developments in her painting. Riley worked exclusively in black and white until the late 1960s when she shifted her palette to grey and then to colour. Since then Riley has employed a rich array of colour in several series of influential bodies of work.
Recent solo exhibitions include Yale Center for British Art, Connecticut (2022); The Lightbox, Woking (2021); National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh and Hayward Gallery, London (2019); The
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Who is Bridget Riley?
Have a look at this painting. Does it make your eyes feel funny?
When Bridget Riley first exhibited her black and white abstract paintings in the 1960s, people were amazed at how they seemed to move. It was like she was painting with electricity and the patterns were live wires!
This style of painting is known as op art. Op artists put colours, shapes and patterns together in clever ways to create an optical illusion. This can make an image look like its moving!
Does this painting look like the sea to you?
Bridget Riley was born in 1931 in London, but when World War II broke out she left the city and moved to Cornwall. She would walk along the coastline and explore the caves where she would sit and watch the reflections in rock pools. She also liked looking at the sea and how the light made it change colour during the day.
In 1960, Bridget Riley went to Venice where she saw sculptures by the Italian artist Umberto Boccioni. Here is one of his sculptures. She wanted to make paintings that had curves like Boccioni’s sculptures.
She also starte
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Bridget Riley
Riley was born at Norwood, London, the daughter of a businessman. Her childhood was spent in Cornwall and Lincolnshire. She studied at Goldsmiths' College from 1949 to 1952, and at the Royal College of Art from 1952 to 1955. She began painting figure subjects in a semi-impressionist manner, then changed to pointillism around 1958, mainly producing landscapes. In 1960 she evolved a style in which she explored the dynamic potentialities of optical phenomena. These so-called 'Op-art' pieces, such as Fall, 1963 (Tate Gallery T00616), produce a disorienting physical effect on the eye.
Riley taught children for two years before joining the Loughborough School of Art, where she initiated a basic design course in 1959. She then taught at Hornsey School of Art, and from 1962 at Croydon School of Art. She worked for the J. Walter Thompson Group advertising agency from 1960, but gave up teaching and advertising agency work in 1963-4.
Group shows include Young Contemporaries, London, 1955; Diversion, South London Art Gallery 1958; an Arts Council Touring Exhibition, 1
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