English artist Bridget Riley is renowned for her contribution to the Op Art movement. Her flagship works deploy optical illusions using black and white geometric patterns. Her early pieces nearly all used black and white, with the occasional addition of grayscale tones. As her career developed she began introducing colours in to her work, and she would experiment with how the addition of different colours in patterns lent a sense of movement to her pieces. Riley travelled extensively and drew inspiration from the places she visited, particularly with regard to the colours she chose to work with. Shadow Play, an oil on canvas that she produced in 1990, was heavily influenced by Riley’s interest in the Egyptian hieroglyphs in the 1980s. She is also well known for her murals, which have been created for museums in Paris and London.
As well as painting, Bridget Riley is also renowned for her writing. She has worked with well-known art historians, published works on influential artists and curated exhibitions of artists such as Paul Klee, Piet Mondrian, El Greco, Rubens, Paul Cezanne and many others. She is credited with bringing the Op Art movement to global attention with her 1964 painting ‘Current’, which was part of the Responsive Eye exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York City in 1965.
Bridget Riley artwork includes many prints, her first prints being created in the 1960s. Most of Bridget Riley’s prints were screenprints. All of Riley’s prints are original prints as Riley saw printmaking as a distinct medium to create artworks.
