Author Description

Bridget Riley is one of the foremost figures of the op-art movement. With Richard Anuszkiewicz and Victor Vasarely, she pioneered the patterned black-and-white style of painting that enjoyed enormous popularity throughout the 1960s. In the years since, Riley's reputation has continued to grow, with major retrospectives and works in the collections of museums worldwide, from New York's Museum of Modern Art to the Tate Modern. In 2012, she was awarded the prestigious Rubens Prize for her lifelong contribution to European art. Bridget Riley: Painting 1980-2011 surveys the artist's recent dynamic and productive career. Since the early 1980s, Riley has increasingly experimented with color in her art. With works like Echo and Red With Red, she explores the spatial effects of color, creating geometric patterns throughout her compositions that convey movement and three-dimensionality that change according to the viewer's position. Riley also began to incorporate curves into her work in the form of radiant, rhythmic lines and arches that seem to make the surface of these painting vibrate. This book collects nearly fifty of Riley's best-known works from the past three decades, including paintings, gouaches, and a series of studies. Renowned experts Michael Bracewell, Eric de Chassey, Lucius Grisebach, and Robert Kudielka provide critical commentary to these works, which are also accompanied by an interview with the artist by Michael Harrison. Beautifully illustrated and broadly accessible, this book will renew interest in this remarkable twentieth-century artist.