Bridget Riley Op Artist in the 1960s
Bridget Riley ra-two1981 (Left) and Big Blue 1982 (Right)
I’ve always been a fan of Bridget Riley and remember visiting the retrospective of her ‘stripe’ paintings from the 1960s and 70s at the Serpentine Gallery in 1999. More recently we took at day out in summer 2015 to the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill on Sea to see her ‘curve’ paintings (1961- 2014). Last weekend all five of the Miller family popped in to see her third solo exhibition of mostly ‘disc’ paintings at the David Zwirner Gallery in Grafton Street in Mayfair featuring recent work from the last four years. The amazing thing is that despite the obvious differences between stripes, curves and discs there is no doubt that they are all the work of a single artist with an endless fascination with repetition and the interaction between shapes and colours.
Bridget Riley Cataract 3 1967
We walked up from the Royal Academy where we met for a snack and visited the ‘Charles I: King and Collector’ exhibition featuring the impressive collection which was broken up when he literally lost his head in 1649. The Van Dyck portraits of Charles I are especially impressive but touch on the king’s self regard which caused the second English Civil War and cost him his life.
By the time we reached the David Zwirner Gallery we were in the mood for something a bit more contemporary than Charles I and the the Bridget Riley exhibition is certainly that. It is displayed over three floors in a Georgian townhouse.
For some ‘dotty’ reason we started goofing about – striking poses and taking lots of mobile phone photos amongst the paintings – thinking we weren’t being watched only to discover as we left that the front desk has CCTV cameras. How embarrassing – but I’m sure Bridget Riley would be pleased we had such fun.
Bridget Riley Curves Wall Painting 2015 at Bexhill on Sea
Diana and Bridget Riley Disc wall painting David Zwirner Gallery 2018