Spanning over 50 years of Bridget Riley’s career, a focused display at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art explores the dialogue between black-and-white and colour in the artist’s work.
From the early to mid-1960s Riley worked exclusively in black and white, gaining critical attention internationally for her Op art paintings, before shifting her palette to grey and then to colour in 1967. For the succeeding decades, Riley has employed a rich array of pigments as she has continued her investigations into perception and sensation through several series of influential bodies of work. Over the past two years, monochromatic paintings have returned into her practice. However, rather than reviving ideas from the 1960s, these paintings function in a new way, progressing directly out of the artist’s preceding paintings in colour.
Drawn primarily from private collections, the display features several paintings that have rarely been exhibited. These works will provide a unique context for Riley’s painting Over (1966), which has been held in the collection of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art since 1979.
An accompanying catalogue, published by Ridinghouse in association with National Galleries of Scotland, includes essays by Éric de Chassey and Frances Spalding alongside a historic interview with the artist by Robert Kudielka.
For further information, see the National Galleries of Scotland website.
Bridget Riley: Paintings 1963–2015
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh
15 April 2016 – 16 April 2017