Bridget Riley @ Tate Britain, London

Bridget Riley 

Tate Britain, London 

21 July 2025 – 7 June 2026

Bridget Riley 

Concerto I, 2024 

Tate, Presented by the artist 2025 

© Bridget Riley 2025. All rights reserved

Tate announced that it has received the gift of a major recent painting by BRIDGET RILEY (b.1931), one of the most influential artists of our time. Premiering at Tate Britain as part of a new display of Riley’s paintings running until 7 June 2026, Concerto I 2024 has been generously donated by the artist and joins Tate’s holdings of her work spanning a remarkable six-decade working life.

Alex Farquharson, Director of Tate Britain said: “We are extremely grateful to Bridget Riley for her generosity in making such a significant gift to the nation. Riley’s work changed the landscape of abstract art and Concerto I demonstrates how she continues to expand her practice while upholding a commitment to exploring energy and sensation through colour and form. We’re delighted to be able to show the painting in Tate Britain’s free collection displays over the next year, and I have no doubt it will soon become one of the best-loved works in the gallery.”

Bridget Riley 

Elongated Triangles 5, 1971 

Presented by the Institute of Contemporary Prints 1975. 

© Bridget Riley 2025. All rights reserved 

Photo © Tate (Sonal Bakrania)

Renowned internationally for her visually vibrant works, Bridget Riley’s particular approach to painting involves the skilful balancing of forms and colour to explore perceptions of space, balance and dynamism. Her recent works, Concerto 1 and Concerto 2 reflect the artist’s abiding love of French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painters and their engagement with colour. High in key, Concerto 1 is uplifting, while Concerto 2 explores hidden images.

Bridget Riley 

Fall, 1963 

Tate, Purchased 1963 

© Bridget Riley 2025. All rights reserved. 

Photo © Tate (Joe Humphrys)

Highlighting Riley’s dialogue with the sensory experience of sight, the new display includes Fall 1963, an important early abstract painting in Tate’s collection. The artist has described this painting as “a field of visual energy, which accumulates until it reaches maximum tension.” Using black and white curves, it evokes feelings of both elation and disturbance. Fall is being shown for the first time since receiving sustainable conservation treatment as part of GREENART, a groundbreaking new project researching ways to preserve cultural heritage using environmentally friendly materials.

Building on the long-standing relationship between Bridget Riley and Tate, this display is the artist’s fourth showing at the institution, having previously presented displays in 1973, 1994, and a large-scale retrospective survey in 2003. Fall was the first work by Bridget Riley to enter Tate’s collection in 1963 and has since been joined by nine paintings, 25 studies, and three works on paper by the artist. Concerto I is the first work by Bridget Riley created within this decade to be brought into Tate’s collection, expanding its representation of her practice.

Bridget Riley’s work is part of a series of regularly changing displays at Tate Britain to be staged since the gallery unveiled a full rehang in 2023. Collection works by Jacob Epstein, a key figure in the direct carving movement of the early 20th century, are currently installed in the Duveens Galleries at the heart of Tate Britain. Exploring the interplay between carving and modelling in Epstein’s work, monumental sculptures in stone are juxtaposed with bronze portrait busts. On 28 July, Pieter Casteels’s painting A Fable from Aesop: The Vain Jackdaw 1723 will be shown for the first time as part of a display looking at how artists have been inspired by birds. Several new artist interventions, first implemented with the rehang, will also appear throughout the collection. Found ceramics painted by Lubaina Himid will feature in the room exploring the rise of the urban metropolis in the era of Hogarth. Archive materials from Stuart Brisley’s time working on a project to record the experience of the inhabitants of Peterlee New Town and its surrounding villages will be included in the display exploring the place of abstract art in Britain’s post-war reconstruction.

TATE BRITAIN

Millbank, London SW1P 4RG

www.tate.org.uk

Bridget Riley @ David Zwirner, London - Recent Paintings 2014 – 2017

Bridget Riley: Recent Paintings 2014 – 2017 
David Zwirner, London
Through March 10, 2018

Bridget Riley in her London studio, 2017

Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner, London

David Zwirner presents recent work from the last four years by British artist BRIDGET RILEY, her third solo exhibition with the gallery. Spanning three floors of the 24 Grafton Street location in London, the exhibition includes wall paintings and works on canvas as well as a group of related studies that focus on two themes: works in black-and-white and the disc. The works on view both extend and rework the artist’s previous investigations of these motifs in new ways.

Bridget Riley’s formally taut, abstract compositions yield a singular sense of visual pleasure for the viewer, a notion derived as much from the artist’s formative encounters with Old Master and Impressionist painting as from her early experiences with nature. Since 1961, she has focused exclusively on seemingly simple geometric forms, such as lines, circles, curves, and squares, arrayed across a surface—whether a canvas, a wall, or paper—according to an internal logic. The resulting compositions actively engage the viewer, at times triggering sensations of vibration and movement. This sense of dynamism was explored to great effect in the artist’s earliest black-and-white paintings, which established the basis of her enduring formal vocabulary. In 1967, Riley introduced color into her work, thus expanding the perceptual and optical possibilities of her compositions. Though she has completed site-specific murals, beginning in 1983 with her work for the Royal Liverpool University Hospital, more recently, the development of Bridget Riley’s body of wall paintings, initiated in 2007 with Arcadia 1, underscores perception itself as her enduring subject. Painting directly on the wall, Bridget Riley collapses the distinction between figure, ground, and support, thus activating the picture plane in a different way than her works on canvas. 

Over the course of her more than fifty-year career, Bridget Riley has frequently returned to earlier ideas and even to specific works in order to identify alternative directions that a form could take. As she has noted, “I am sometimes asked ‘What is your objective’ and this I cannot truthfully answer. I work ‘from’ something rather than ‘towards’ something. It is a process of discovery.” (1) On the ground floor are wall paintings and works on canvas in which the artist has returned to an achromatic palette for the first time since the 1960s. In particular, works such as Quiver 3 (2014) take up the motif of the triangle, first explored in Tremor (1962; Museum für Gegenwartskunst Siegen, Germany), which comprises tightly tessellated, irregular triangles that combine to create a subtle sense of undulation across the surface of a square canvas. Here, Bridget Riley revisits the equilateral triangle, but introduces a curved edge that greatly modulates the overall tenor of her composition. 

The gallery’s first floor includes wall paintings and works on canvas featuring a recently inaugurated motif: discs. While new to Bridget Riley’s lexicon, these works have their basis in the artist’s Deny paintings from 1966, which feature gridded circular forms. Executed during a period when Riley was beginning to experiment with color, in particular incorporating gray tones into her compositions as a chromatic intermediary between black and white, these works are animated by the sum effect of the interaction of color and form. With the discs, which were first presented in the artist’s 2017 solo exhibition at Christchurch Art Gallery, New Zealand, Riley has broken open the tightly constructed grids of the 1960s, creating even more complex and nuanced structures within which individual components interact, depending on the viewer’s position. Also on view in the Upper Room will be a group of studies for this body of work. Throughout her career, Bridget Riley has extensively utilized smaller scale works as a means of arriving at her final compositions. Presented alongside larger works, these studies give crucial insight into the artist’s working method. 

On the occasion of the exhibition, a new monograph on Bridget Riley has been published by David Zwirner Books, featuring new scholarship on the artist by art historian Richard Shiff.

(1) Bridget Riley, “Statement” (1970) in Robert Kudielka, ed., The Eye’s Mind: Bridget Riley, Collected Writings 1965–2009 (London: Ridinghouse, 2009), p. 101.

BRIDGET RILEY was born in 1931 in London, where she attended Goldsmiths College from 1949 to 1952 and the Royal College of Art from 1952 to 1955.

Bridget Riley’s first solo exhibitions were held at Gallery One, London in 1962 and 1963, followed by two exhibitions at Robert Fraser Gallery, London, in 1966 and 1967. She was also at that time included in numerous group exhibitions such as Towards Art?, Royal College of Art London (1962); The New Generation, Whitechapel Gallery, London (1964); and Painting and Sculpture of a Decade 1954–1964, Tate Gallery, London (1964). In 1965, her work was included in the now-seminal group exhibition The Responsive Eye, organized by William Seitz at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. In 1968, she represented Great Britain at the 34th Venice Biennale (along with Phillip King), where she was the first living British painter to win the prestigious International Prize for Painting. Her first retrospective, covering the period 1961-1970, opened at the Hanover Kunstverein in 1971, and subsequently traveled to Kunsthalle Bern, Kunstahlle Düsseldorf, Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna, Turin, and the Hayward Gallery, London. More recent solo exhibitions include Bridget Riley: Cosmos at Christchurch Art Gallery, New Zealand (2017); Bridget Riley: Venice and Beyond, Paintings 1967-1972 at Graves Gallery, Museum Sheffield, England (2016); Bridget Riley - The Curve Paintings 1961-2014 at De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill on Sea, England (2015; traveled to Gemeentemuseum, The Hague); Bridget Riley: Learning from Seurat at The Courtauld Gallery in London (2015); and Bridget Riley at the Art Institute of Chicago (2014-2015). Bridget Bridget Riley: Paintings and Related Work (2010-2011) was on view at the Sunley Room at the National Gallery, London. Also in London in 2010, the National Portrait Gallery presented Bridget Riley: From Life, an exhibition of Riley’s little-known sketches drawn from life. Other recent international museum shows include Bridget Riley: Flashback, which first went on view at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool in 2009; Bridget Riley: Rétrospective at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in 2008; Bridget Riley: Paintings and Drawings 1961-2004 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney in 2004-2005; Bridget Riley: New Work at the Museum Haus Esters and Kaiser Wilhelm Museum, Krefeld, Germany in 2002; and Bridget Riley: Reconnaissance at the Dia Center for the Arts, New York in 2000-2001.

A new large-scale wall painting by Bridget Riley is currently on view at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas through 2019. In addition, Bridget Riley’s work is highlighted in the exhibition Seurat to Riley: The Art of Perception, Pattern, Pointillism & Op Art at The Holburne Museum in Bath until January 18, 2018 (first presented at Compton Verney Art Gallery & Park, Warwickshire); as well as in Monochrome: Painting in Black and White at The National Gallery, London through February 18, 2018. A major exhibition of Bridget Riley’s work, Bridget Riley : Paintings from the 1960s to the Present, will be on view at the Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art, Sakura, Japan, from April 14 through August 26, 2018.

Bridget Riley joined David Zwirner in 2014, and the gallery’s inaugural exhibition of her work, Bridget Riley: The Stripe Paintings 1961-2014, was held in London that year. In 2015, a career spanning survey was presented at the gallery in New York. In 1974, Bridget Riley was named a CBE (Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) and in 1999, appointed the Companion of Honour. In 2003, the artist was awarded the Praemium Imperiale in Tokyo. She received the Kaiser Ring of the City of Goslar, Germany in 2009 and the Rubens Prize of the City of Siegen, Germany in 2012.

DAVID ZWIRNER, LONDON
24 Grafton Street London, W1S 4EZ
www.davidzwirner.com

Bridget Riley, Timothy Taylor Gallery, London - New Paintings, Wall Paintings and Gouaches

Bridget Riley 

New Paintings, Wall Paintings and Gouaches 

Timothy Taylor Gallery, London 

7 November - 23 December 2009 

Timothy Taylor Gallery and Karsten Schubert present the second exhibition in the gallery by the internationally acclaimed painter Bridget Riley. Working specifically to the cool and elegant proportions of the gallery space, Bridget Riley premieres two specially created wall paintings, as well as new paintings and gouaches.

Bridget Riley’s art is one of continual discovery and exploration, of testing the limits and of uncovering new challenges: “You cannot deal with thought directly outside practice as a painter: ‘doing’ is essential in order to find out what form your thought takes” (Work, Bridget Riley, Flashback, Arts Council catalogue 2009).

After the success of Bridget Riley’s colourful stripe paintings of the 1980s, the artist sought new challenges and a way to move the eye in different ways over the canvas. The result of her subsequent investigations with collage and drawing was the creation of a lively new form, a patch of colour similar to a brush mark, which was free of any associations with the square, the stripe, or other recognisable forms. This particular shape, refined and developed in recent years, offers the opportunity for an incredible melding of form and colour. Bridget Riley uses its inherent curves to create works of great energy and movement, building up complex layers of interlocking vertical and diagonal planes. In her most recent paintings, these dynamic, layered forms interrupt and threaten to break out from the picture plane – overhanging the frieze-like frame, they jostle and strain to escape, demonstrating Riley’s consummate creation of a ‘supple plastic space’ within the fictive realm of painting.

Bridget Riley’s work is a compelling and complex study of how form and colour are interwoven, and the complexities and joys to be had from that co-mingling. Commenting in Frieze magazine on Riley’s major exhibition in Paris last year, Michael Bracewell observed that over the past 50 years, Riley has been engaged in “an epic excursion into the consciousness of time, place and memory, refined from an infinity of elements into a universal and symphonic text, open to all”. As the artist herself observed, “Pure perception – untrammelled perception – is surprising: startling, exciting, powerful and beautiful” (Bridget Riley in conversation with Lynne Cooke, 2005).

Bridget Riley’s lifelong achievement and contribution to the history of painting is widely recognized. This year, she was awarded the prestigious Kaiser Ring of the City of Goslar with previous recipients including Henry Moore, Max Ernst, Joseph Beuys and Jenny Holzer amongst others. She is also the first subject in a new series of retrospective exhibitions entitled Flashback. The show opened at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool this September celebrating significant early purchases by The Arts Council Collection and will also travel to three additional venues in the UK.

Bridget Riley was born in London in 1931. She studied at Goldsmiths College, 1949 – 1952 and the Royal College of Art, 1952 – 1955. In 1969, she was the first woman to win the International Prize for Painting whilst representing Britain at the 34th Venice Biennale. Bridget Riley was made a CBE in 1974, and in 1998 was awarded the Order of the Companion of Honour. Major exhibitions have included the Hayward Gallery, 1970 and 1992/94; a British Council touring retrospective in the USA, Australia and Japan, 1979; and retrospective exhibitions at Tate Britain, 2003; Museum of Modern Art in Sydney, Australia, 2005; City Gallery Wellington, New Zealand, 2005; and Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 2008.

TIMOTHY TAYLOR GALLERY

15 Carlos Place, London, W1K 2EX

www.timothytaylorgallery.com

Art abstrait anglais des années soixante @ Mamco, Genève - Stroll On! Aspects de l'art abstrait britannique des années soixante (1959-1966)

Stroll On!

Aspects de l'art abstrait britannique des années soixante (1959-1966)

Derek Boshier, Bernard Cohen, Robyn Denny, Michael Kidner, Phillip King, Gerald Laing, Bridget Riley, Ralph Rumney, Peter Sedgley, Richard Smith, William Tucker

Mamco, Musée d’art moderne et contemporain, Genève 

Commissaire : Éric de Chassey

25 octobre 2005 - 15 janvier 2006 

La légende voudrait qu’il ait fallu attendre les années 1990 pour que la scène artistique anglaise acquière un dynamisme et une créativité qui pouvaient la placer aux avant-postes de l’art international. Pourtant, trois décennies plus tôt, les artistes anglais produisaient des œuvres dont les questionnements rejoignaient, anticipaient et parfois menaient le monde de l’art dans son ensemble. Que ces artistes aient rarement bénéficié de l’attention qu’ils méritaient résulte moins de leurs créations per se que des structures du marché de l’art et des institutions. Les préjugés liés au « caractère typiquement anglais de l’art anglais » ne devraient plus nous empêcher de voir qu’ils ont fait preuve de la même vitalité, de la même capacité d’intuition, que le Swinging London dont on retient les apports à la musique Pop ou à la mode.

Il ne s’agit pas de refaire ici une histoire exhaustive du monde de l’art anglais dans les années soixante, ni même de mener une analyse sociologique de la scène artistique londonienne de cette époque. L’accent est mit sur l’un des aspects les plus frappants de cette décennie explosive: du fait de peintres tels que Robyn Denny, Ralph Rumney, Bernard Cohen, Bridget Riley et Peter Sedgley, et de sculpteurs comme Phillip King, Tim Scott et William Tucker, des œuvres abstraites ont été créées qui proposent une « étonnante continuité » avec le monde ordinaire plutôt qu’une coupure avec ce dernier au profit de valeurs transcendantales ou mystiques (comme cela avait généralement été le cas dans l’histoire de l’art abstrait). Ces œuvres tissent des liens avec la musique de jazz contemporaine, le rock and roll, les romans de science-fiction, tout autant qu’avec l’histoire de l’art, passé et présent. Ils ont rompu avec l’idée que l’abstraction devrait lutter contre les images et ont souhaité établir une relation vitale entre l’autonomie de l’œuvre d’art et un environnement ordinaire façonné par les mass médias et la culture de consommation (deux mondes trop souvent considérés comme antithétiques).

Ces connections expliquent que l’art abstrait ne soit pas toujours apparu comme distinct du Pop art figuratif. A l’orée des années soixante, Peter Blake et Richard Smith associèrent des motifs et des gestes abstraits aux objets de tous les jours qu’ils peignaient. Au contraire, en 1964-1965, Derek Boshier et Gerald Laing, artistes de la deuxième génération du Pop art, sont passés à l’abstraction en ne retenant de leurs œuvres figuratives antérieures que le dispositif de présentation, sans les objets.

Sans pour autant céder à la compulsion illustrative qui a frappé les artistes Pop, les artistes abstraits rassemblés dans cette exposition se sont positionnés au sein du « continuum entre les beaux-arts et les arts populaires » que décrivait alors le critique d’art Lawrence Alloway. Mettant l’accent sur la relation avec le spectateur, ils ont expérimenté de nouvelles méthodes d’exposition et de nombreux procédés formels, qui faisaient parfois écho à ceux du monde de la publicité et de la signalisation. Leurs œuvres abstraites créèrent ainsi leurs propres lieux spécifiques et/ou la suggestion de voyages physiques ou imaginaires.

Cette exposition suit les chemins insolites que ces artistes ont empruntés, en montrant des œuvres qui possèdent une force visuelle inattendue et impressionnante, des œuvres dont certains questionnements ont été récemment rejoués, la plupart du temps involontairement, par une nouvelle génération d’artistes européens et américains désireux de revitaliser l’abstraction. 

Eric de Chassey 

Eric de Chassey est Professeur d’histoire de l’art des XXe et XXI e siècles à l’Université François-Rabelais de Tours (France), membre de l’Institut Universitaire de France. Il est l’auteur de plusieurs ouvrages et catalogues d’exposition sur l’art moderne et contemporain. Il a été le commissaire des expositions suivantes « Abstraction/Abstractions : Géométries provisoires » (Musée d’art moderne, Saint-Etienne, 1997), « [Corps] : Social » (Ecole supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1999), « Made in USA : L’art américain de 1908 à 1947 » (Musées des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux, Rennes et Montpellier), « Matisse – Kelly : Dessins de plantes » (Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris, et St Louis Art Museum 2002).

MAMCO

MUSÉE D’ART MODERNE ET CONTEMPORAIN

10 rue des Vieux Grenadiers, 1205 Genève 

www.mamco.ch