Art · 20th century
born 1931 · British
Op art — optical abstraction
Bridget Riley makes paintings that move. Working first in black and white and then in colour, she arranges stripes, discs, curves and twisted squares so precisely that the eye cannot hold them still: the surface shimmers, swells and flickers. She was the central British figure of Op art and the first woman to win the international painting prize at the Venice Biennale.
A grid of black and white squares that tips and compresses towards a vertical fold, the artist's breakthrough into pure abstraction (1961)
Arts Council Collection
Movement in Squares
No free image available (likely still in copyright) · see it on Wikipedia
A single sheet of tight black curves that shimmers and blurs as the eye tries to follow it (1963)
Tate, London
Fall
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Waving black and white bands reproduced on the cover of a 1965 New York catalogue, and then, without permission, on a dress (1964)
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Current, the cover of MoMA's The Responsive Eye; the fashion copies led the artist to campaign for artists' copyright in America
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Twisting turquoise and red bands like a rippling flag or water surface (1967)
British Council Collection
Cataract 3 — one of the first works in which colour does the optical work
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A screen of coloured lozenges named after the dancing form of a Hindu god (1993)
Tate, London
Nataraja, the cosmic dancer Shiva
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