British artist Bridget Riley (b. 1931) is one of the most celebrated abstract painters of her generation. Bridget Riley Drawings: From the Artist’s Studio — the first exhibition dedicated exclusively to her drawings in over 50 years — provides an intimate view of her studio practice, in which the making of works on paper plays a central role.
The show includes more than 75 studies from the artist’s collection created between the 1940s and the 2000s, among them early figurative and landscape drawings made during her student years; black-and-white studies for her best known paintings from the 1960s; and a diverse array of color compositions going back to the late 1960s. Together, they demonstrate Riley’s commitment to paper, pencil, ink, and gouache as tools of exploration and innovation. From working drawings on graph paper to finished gouaches, these studies anticipate her finished paintings and reveal an essential aspect of her artistic process, which she describes as follows: “It is as though there is an eye at the end of my pencil, which tries, independently of my personal general-purpose eye, to penetrate a kind of obscuring veil of thickness.”
In early drawings from the 1940s and ’50s, some exhibited for the first time, Riley looked to the human form and nature to establish her investigation of pure abstraction. Starting in 1960, she began to make the geometric compositions for which she became internationally renowned (albeit problematically) as an avatar of the Op Art movement. In the late 1960s, she shifted from employing exclusively black, white, and gray elements to an exploration of color in dynamic stripes and waves. Her primary aim was to produce “a color situation which releases light as you look at it.” Recent drawings show Riley as an artist who builds on past work, but ceaselessly moves forward.
The exhibition is curated by Rachel Federman, Associate Curator, Modern and Contemporary Drawings, Morgan Library & Museum; Cynthia Burlingham, Director of the Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts and Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs, Hammer Museum; and Jay A. Clarke, Rothman Family Curator, Prints and Drawings, Art Institute of Chicago. An accompanying catalogue reproduces all works in the exhibition and includes new essays by Clarke, Federman, and art historian and critic Thomas Crow.
Bridget Riley Drawings: From the Artist’s Studio is on view through October 8 at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City.
For more information, visit themorgan.org.
