Bridget Riley

Bridget Riley (b. 1931)

Bridget Riley attended Goldsmiths College in London between 1949 and 1952, and the Royal College of Art in London between 1952 and 1955. She taught at Loughborough College of Art (1959-1961), Hornsey College of Art (1960) and Croydon College of Art (1962-1964). Between 1959 and 1964, she was adviser to the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency. She has studios in London, Cornwall and Provence. She was awarded the Critics Prize by the AICA in 1963, was a prize-winner at John Moores Liverpool Exhibition in 1963, and a prize-winner of the Peter Stuyvesant Foundation Tour Grant in 1964, consolidating her growing international reputation. There were Arts Council touring shows in 1973 and 1984, the year after she designed sets and costumes for Ballet Rambert's Colour Moves. She won the International Prize at the 34th Venice Biennale and was awarded a CBE in 1972.

Riley masterminded the Space Limited Group with Peter Sedgley. It was located in studios in former warehouses in London, which were also used as meeting places and information centres. The group was comparable to the Parisian Groupe de Recherche d'Art Visuel (GRAV). Bridget Riley was concerned with exploring various optical effects and distortion of perspectives, by means of the successive contraction and expansion of lines or geometric shapes and introduced personal new elements, arranging hard-edged black and white dots or lines in regular patterns to create disturbing effects of light and movement. During this exploration and in terms of her achievements, Bridget Riley showed such perfection both of ideas and quality of execution that she soon attracted attention.

Text Source: Benezit Dictionary of Artists