1931
Born in London

 

1939-45
Childhood in Cornwall.  During the War she lives with her mother, younger sister and aunt while her father is away in the armed forces.

 

1946-55
Education at Cheltenham Ladies� College, Goldsmiths College, London and Royal College of Art.  Her contemporaries include Frank Auerbach, Peter Blake, Robyn Denny, Richard Smith and Joe Tilson.

 

1956-59
Has various jobs, including teaching.  In 1958 she sees the Whitechapel Art Gallery�s Pollock exhibition, which makes a powerful impact.

 

1960-1964
1960 marks the first year of Riley�s independent work.  By 1961 she is painting black and white paintings which, with the addition of greys, continues until 1966.  In 1962 she has her first solo exhibition at Gallery One.

1965
By now Riley is gaining international recognition and in 1965 she plays a leading role in The Responsive Eye exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.  Richard Feigen Gallery simultaneously opens a solo show of her work, which is sold out before the opening night.  She has become a star to whom Josef Albers, Ad Reinhardt and even Dali pay tribute.  But her success is double edged.  Fashion shop windows are full of �Op� imitations of her work.  Riley�s attempts to take legal action against her plagiarists fail, there being no copyright protection for artists in the US at that time.  On her return to London, Riley believes it will take at least twenty years before anyone looks at her paintings seriously again.

 

1965-1967
Period of transition as Riley introduces coloured greys into her work and in 1967 makes the breakthrough to pure colour.

 

1968
She wins the International Prize for painting at the 34th Venice Biennale.  She is the first British contemporary painter and the first woman ever to achieve this distinction.  Later that year, Riley and Peter Sedgley establish SPACE, a charitable organisation providing artists with low-cost studios in large disused warehouses, a service still active today.

 

1970-71
A major European retrospective covering the period 1961-1970.  The exhibition shows the development from the black and white works to the new colour paintings.  After opening in Hannover, it tours Bern, D�sseldorf, Turin, London and finally, in reduced form, Prague.

 

1971-73
A period of radical change.  Becoming increasingly curious about the European tradition in painting, she undertakes various journeys throughout Europe.  By 1973 she has changed the formal organisation of her paintings altogether, a move that anticipates the freer, more open structure of her work in the Eighties.

 

1974-77
During this period she works on the �curve� paintings, a lyrical turn from her previous work, and quite at odds with prevailing taste.  Visits Japan and India.

 

1978-80
A second retrospective exhibition opens in Buffalo and then makes two further stops in the USA, two in Australia and then Tokyo.  This is a period of extensive travel, including a visit to Egypt.  Here she is surprised by the consistent use of a certain group of colours in the arts and craft of ancient Egypt., consummately present in the tomb paintings on the West Bank of Luxor.

 

1980-85
Returning to London, Riley begins to consider the potential of the �Egyptian palette� in her own work and at the same time studies the use of colour by the Nineteenth Century French painters of classical Modernism.  She begins work on the second group of �stripe� paintings.  In 1981 she is appointed a trustee of the National Gallery in London and serves until 1988.  She lectures both on her work and that of artists from the past.  Two commissions are accepted: a series of wall paintings for the Royal Liverpool Hospital and backcloth designs for the Ballet Rambert.

1986-1991
Riley�s work moves into a new area.  By breaking up the vertical register in her work, and introducing a dynamic diagonal, Riley disrupts the balance of her pictorial space creating larger and smaller units in lozenge form.  The palette opens up to include up to twenty or more hues.

 

1992-94
A further retrospective opens at the Kunsthalle in N�rnberg and travels to the Josef Albers Museum at Bottrop, the Hayward Gallery, London and the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham.  The show coincides with an increased interest in England with artists of the sixties, and Riley emerges as one of the few artists of that period who were subsequently able to develop their work.

 

1995-97
Visiting the Mondrian retrospective at the Haags Gemeentemuseum, leads to an intense re-engagement with the work and writings of Mondrian.  In 1996 the Tate Gallery asks Riley to select a Mondrian exhibition.  It is the first comprehensive Mondrian show in England in forty years and draws huge crowds.  Her own work is entering a new area as she develops a new sensation of �depth� in her work.  This leads, partly under the influence of Mondrian, to a large temporary wall painting at the Kunsthalle Berne in May 1998.  The sensation of layered planes, previously achieved through complex colour relationships, is here the result of simple black and white drawing.

 

1997-2000
Riley introduces narrow segments of a circle into her developed rhomboid structures, to both extend her means and to more easily facilitate the looping arc-like movements of the colour organisation.  This leads to a simplification of both colour and form.  The diagonal remains but in a more reticent role and a new curvilinear structure emerges.  The first results of this development are shown at the exhibition, Bridget Riley: Works 1961-1998 at Abbot Hall Art Gallery and Museum, Kendal (Cumbria).  In the 1999 New Year�s Honours Riley is made a Companion on Honour.  Later that year, the exhibition, Bridget Riley: Paintings from the 1960s and �70s opens at the Serpentine Gallery, London where it attracts record attendance.  In the summer of 2000 Bridget Riley: New Paintings and Gouaches opens at Waddington Galleries, London.  Also that year, two exhibitions open in New York: Bridget Riley: Paintings 1982-2000 and Early Works on Paper at Pace Wildenstein, and Bridget Riley: Reconnaissance at the Dia Center for the Arts.  Both shows are met with critical acclaim.

Since 2000
Riley continues to work and develop her curvelinear style, working at times to an extremely large scale (Evoe, 2000, 194 x 580 cm). Bridget Riley � New Work at the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum and Museum House Esters, Krefeld, is the first museum exhibition of this new work (March-August 2002). Though in great demand as a painter and lecturer Riley finds time to co-curate an extensive and hugely successful exhibition of the work of Paul Klee at the Hayward Gallery, London.  With her first retrospective at the Tate Gallery in 2003 Riley continues to reach an ever larger audience and gains new followers with each generation.