RILEY, BRIDGET
1931 London

Title: "Rose Rose 15".
Date: 2011.
Technique: Oil on canvas.
Measurement: 36 x 21 cm.
Notation: Signed and dated at the lower right edge: Riley '11. Titled, signed and dated on the reverse of the folded canvas: ROSE ROSE 15. Riley 2011. Here additionally equipped with work details and directional arrow.


The work is registered at the Archive Bridget Riley, London



Provenance:
- - Gallery Max Hetzler, Berlin (acquired in 2013)



- Beautiful small striped painting in high-contrast colours

- The painting of the pioneer of the Britihs Op-Art are rarely offered on the German auction market

- Bridget Riley represented Great Britain at the Biennale in Venice in 1968 and was the first woman to win the price for painting



Bridget Riley was born in London on April 24, 1931. From 1949 to 1952, she studied at Goldsmiths College, followed by studies at the Royal College of Art until 1955. Inspired by Georges Seurat, her early works initially drew upon Impressionism; however, by 1961 she decisively abandoned figurative painting. In the early 1960s, Riley began experimenting with optical effects and became one of the leading representatives of Op Art. She gained international attention in 1965 through her participation in The Responsive Eye exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which propelled her to sudden prominence. In 1968, she represented Great Britain at the Venice Biennale, where she became the first woman to receive the International Prize for Painting.

With a reduced and meticulously calculated visual language composed of stripes, curves, circles, and triangles, Riley explores the principles of rhythm, movement, and perception throughout her oeuvre. Repetition and development form the fundamental elements of her artistic practice. Her art emerges from planning and calculation, standing in deliberate opposition to the clichéd ideal of the spontaneous artistic genius. Until 1967, she worked exclusively in black and white. Chant 2 (1967) marked a turning point, as it was the first work in which she introduced color. While Riley’s interest in dynamic compositions of stark contrasts that challenge visual habits remained central, the addition of color opened up a wealth of new possibilities. In the 1980s, inspired by the colors of ancient Egyptian art, she developed the chromatic system she referred to as her “Egyptian palette.”

Since the 1960s, stripes have been a recurring motif in Riley’s oeuvre. Following an intensive engagement with the subject between 1980 and 1985, she returned to it in the Rose Rose series between 2009 and 2011. Rose Rose 15 (2011) is one of twenty small-format stripe paintings from the series, in which she expanded her “Egyptian palette” for the first time with new shades of pink, orange, and red. The work presented here consists of evenly spaced, vertical bands of color in a warm palette. Rose-red, pink, and yellow dominate the composition, their harmonious transitions interrupted by tones of green, violet, and blue, which introduce compelling contrasts and visual accents.

The work is distinguished, characteristically for Riley, by its perfection: the stripes are applied with such precision that they appear almost printed. Despite the clearly defined edges separating the colors, they remain interconnected. Their uniform structure allows for a complex interplay between neighboring color fields, which interact with one another and thereby alter the viewer’s perception of the individual hues. The choice of vertical lines is deliberate: the wandering eye is confronted with a rapid succession of color changes, producing a constant destabilization of the visual field. As the eye moves across the surface, it continuously encounters interpenetrating and intensifying color constellations.

Rose Rose 15 depicts nothing and seeks to represent nothing; rather, it concerns the perception of color itself—the immediate, pure experience of the artwork. Its chromatic combinations are as unpredictable and beautiful as nature itself. In Riley’s understanding, art is not an intellectual or cultural experience, but a sensory one. Rose Rose 15 simultaneously challenges and delights the eye, creating a concentrated spectacle of constantly shifting relationships that captivates the viewer.



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#Bridget Riley #Painting #Abstract #2010s #Oil #Post War.







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