Bridget Riley's Work

Bridget Riley always wanted to establish her own style and when she started painting again in the late fifties, after seeing an exhibition of teacher and writer Harry Thubron, her paintings were mainly influenced by Matisse and Bonnard.

She attended Thurbon's summer school in Norfolk and met his assistant Maurice de Sausmarez, who prodded and encouraged her to study the art of Georges-Pierre Seurat. She traveled to Italy, gathered up more impressions and worked herself in the picture during her teaching years at Croydon in 1962 when she also had her first exhibition in spring of that year at the Gallery One in London.

In the years that followed, Bridget found her own style, working only in black and white with an occasional touch of gray, using simple geometric shapes, squares, lines, and ovals. Her work was called 'Op Art' and became popular worldwide after an exhibition in 1965 in the Museum of Modern Art and the Richard Feigen Gallery in New York.

A little apprehensive, Bridget slowly began to incorporate color in her paintings, but used no more then three and she produced her first striped, color painting in 1967. She began to travel more and after a trip to Egypt in 1980-1981, found the combination of colors in the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics that worked for her and extended the number of colors she worked with to five.