Bridget Riley facts for kids

Shadow Play, 1990, oil on canvas

Bridget Louise Riley (born 24 April 1931) is a famous English painter. She is best known for her unique "Op art" paintings. Op art uses shapes and colors to create illusions of movement. Bridget Riley lives and works in London, England, and also in France.

Bridget Riley's Early Life and Education

Bridget Riley was born in Norwood, London, on April 24, 1931. Her father, John Fisher Riley, was a printer. In 1938, his family moved to Lincolnshire.

When World War II started, her father joined the army. Bridget, her mother, and her sister Sally moved to a cottage in Cornwall. This cottage was near the sea. An aunt, who had studied art, shared the cottage with them.

Bridget's early schooling was not regular. She later attended Cheltenham Ladies' College from 1946 to 1948. After that, she studied art at Goldsmiths' College (1949–1952). She then continued her art studies at the Royal College of Art (1952–1955).

Between 1956 and 1958, Bridget took care of her father. He had been in a serious car accident. This was a difficult time for her. After this, she worked in a glassware shop. She also worked part-time as an illustrator for an advertising company until 1962.

How Bridget Riley Developed Her Art Style

Bridget Riley's early paintings were more traditional. They looked like real-life scenes. Around 1958, she started using a style similar to Pointillism. This technique uses many small dots of color.

By 1960, she began creating her famous "Op Art" style. This style uses black and white geometric patterns. These patterns create an illusion of movement and even color. In the summer of 1960, she visited Italy. She saw many "Futurist" artworks there.

Early in her career, Riley also taught art to children. She taught at the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Harrow from 1957 to 1958. She also taught at other art schools.

In 1961, she and her partner, Peter Sedgley, visited France. They bought an old farm and turned it into an art studio. In 1962, she had her first solo art show in London.

In 1968, Riley helped create an organization called SPACE. This group helps artists find large, affordable studio spaces.

Learning from Georges Seurat

Georges Seurat's 1886–1887 The Bridge at Courbevoie, copied and enlarged by Riley, had a powerful influence on her approach to painting.

The Courtauld Gallery's 2015–2016 exhibition "Bridget Riley: Learning from Seurat", including her 1960 painting Pink Landscape (seen here in the poster) showed how Riley's style was influenced by Georges Seurat's pointillism and pleasure in seeing.

Bridget Riley's unique style, which grew in the 1960s, was inspired by other artists. One important influence was the French artist Georges Seurat. Seurat was known for his "pointillism."

In 2015, an art show explained how Seurat's work influenced Riley. In 1959, Riley saw Seurat's painting The Bridge at Courbevoie. She decided to paint her own copy of it. This copy has been in her studio ever since.

Art critics say that Riley learned a lot from Seurat. She studied how his technique used different colors together. She even painted her own pointillist landscapes. One example is Pink Landscape (1960). It shows the sunny hills of Tuscany. Riley shares Seurat's "joy for life" and his love for color.

Bridget Riley's Artworks

During the 1960s, Riley became famous for her black and white paintings. These works use geometric shapes to create a feeling of movement. Viewers sometimes felt dizzy or like they were skydiving when looking at them!

From 1961 to 1965, she focused on black and white contrasts. Sometimes she added shades of grey. Her first solo show in 1962 featured these works. For example, in her painting Fall, a curved line repeats to create a moving effect.

Since 1961, Bridget Riley has had assistants help her paint. She carefully plans her designs with drawings. Her assistants then paint the final artworks very precisely.

In 1967, Riley started using color in her paintings. She created her first stripe painting that year. After a big art show in the 1970s, Riley traveled a lot. A trip to Egypt in the early 1980s inspired her. She loved the colorful hieroglyphic decorations.

After this trip, Riley explored new colors and contrasts. In some paintings, lines of color create a shimmering effect. In others, patterns fill the canvas. Shadow Play is a good example of her later colorful works.

Some of her artworks are named after dates or places. For example, Les Bassacs is named after a village in France where she has a studio.

After her visit to Egypt in 1980–1981, Riley created her "Egyptian palette" of colors. She made series like Ka and Ra. These paintings show the spirit and colors of Egypt. In 1983, she returned to Venice to study European color paintings. By the late 1980s, Riley started using diagonal lines. She used parallelograms to add movement to her vertical stripe paintings. In Delos (1983), she used blue, turquoise, emerald, yellow, red, and white.

Large Wall Paintings (Murals)

Bolt of Colour, 2017–2019. Installation view, Chinati Foundation, Marfa, Texas

Bridget Riley has painted temporary murals for famous galleries. These include the Tate and the National Gallery in London. In 2014, she was asked to create a permanent 56-meter mural for St Mary's Hospital, London. This artwork is on the 10th floor of the hospital. She had painted two other murals there over 20 years earlier.

Between 2017 and 2019, Riley finished a very large wall painting. It was for the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas. This was her biggest work yet. It covered six walls of a building. The mural was inspired by her 1983 work Bolt of Colour and used similar Egyptian-inspired colors.

Writer and Curator

Bridget Riley has also written about other artists. She helped organize art exhibitions. For example, she co-curated a show about Piet Mondrian in 1996. In 2002, she helped curate an exhibition about Paul Klee. In 2010, she chose paintings for a special show at the National Gallery in London.

Art Exhibitions

In 1965, Bridget Riley's work was shown in a New York City exhibition called The Responsive Eye. This show brought her work, and the Op Art movement, worldwide attention. Her painting Current (1964) was on the cover of the exhibition's catalog.

At that time, artists in the United States did not have strong copyright protection. This meant her work was copied by businesses. This made her unhappy with such exhibitions. New laws were later passed in 1967 to protect artists.

Riley's work was shown in important art events in 1968 and 1977. In 1968, she represented Great Britain at the Venice Biennale. She was the first British contemporary painter, and the first woman, to win the International Prize for painting there.

In the 1980s, her structured work became less popular. But a 1999 show of her early paintings brought new interest in her optical art. Many other exhibitions have featured her work since then. These include shows at the Tate Britain (2003) and the National Gallery (2010–2011).

In 2014, a show called "Bridget Riley: The Stripe Paintings" was held in London. In 2015, "Bridget Riley: The Curve Paintings" was shown. In 2019, a major exhibition of her work, covering 70 years, was shown in Scotland and London.

In 2021, Riley's work was part of the "Women in Abstraction" exhibition in Paris. In May 2023, her first ceiling painting, Verve, was shown in Rome.

Where to See Her Art (Public Collections)

Many museums and galleries around the world own Bridget Riley's art. Here are some of them:

• Art Institute of Chicago
• British Council Collection, London
• Dallas Museum of Art
• Museum of Modern Art, New York
• National Museum Cardiff
• Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh
• Tate, London
• Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

Influence on Other Artists

Movement in Squares, 1961, was the subject of a 2013 plagiarism debate between Riley and Tobias Rehberger.

Other artists have created paintings inspired by Bridget Riley's work. In 2013, Riley said that a large black-and-white artwork by Tobias Rehberger looked too much like her painting Movement in Squares. She asked for it to be removed from display.

Awards and Recognition

Bridget Riley has received many awards for her art.

• In 1963, she won the AICA Critics Prize.
• In 1968, she won an International Painting Prize at the Venice Biennale.
• In 1974, she was made a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE).
• She has received honorary doctorates from Oxford University (1993) and Cambridge University (1995).
• In 2003, she was given the Praemium Imperiale, a major international art award.
• In 1998, she became a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour. This is a very special award in the Commonwealth.

In the 1980s, Riley was on the board of the National Gallery. She helped stop a plan that would have given museum land to developers. This helped make sure the museum's Sainsbury Wing could be built. She also received the Goslarer Kaiserring in 2009 and the Rubens Prize in 2012. In 2012, she was the first woman to receive the Sikkens Prize, a Dutch art award for the use of color.

Helping Others (Philanthropy)

Bridget Riley supports Paintings in Hospitals. This charity provides art for hospitals and healthcare places in the UK.

Between 1987 and 2014, she created three murals at St Mary's Hospital, London. In 2017, she donated artworks to an auction. The money raised helped support Modern Art Oxford.

Art Market

Bridget Riley's paintings are very valuable.

• In 2006, her painting Untitled (Diagonal Curve) (1966) sold for $2.1 million.
• In 2008, Static 2 (1966) sold for £1,476,500 (about $2.9 million).
• In 2008, Chant 2 (1967) sold for £2,561,250 (about $5.1 million).
• In 2022, Gala (1974) sold for £4,362,000 (about $5.8 million).

Images for kids

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  The Bridge at Courbevoie by Georges Seurat, which Bridget Riley copied.

See also

In Spanish: Bridget Riley para niños