Bridget Riley, Studies: 1984–1997

To learn more about Bridget Riley and to be updated on upcoming exhibitions and other news, sign up to our newsletter here and follow us @davidzwirner.

For this exhibition, Bridget Riley has selected a group of works from the 1980s and 1990s that reflect the connection between the writings of Paul Klee (1879–1940) and her own understanding of abstract painting. As Riley has noted, “Paul Klee was of seminal importance to me because he showed me what abstraction meant.”

These working studies show a movement from ‘stripes’ to ‘rhomboids.’ In the earliest of these works, Riley begins to cross her stripes with short diagonal elements, to move the eye around, across, and through the pictorial area, leading to the development of a new visual form, her ‘rhomboid’ paintings.

Image: Bridget Riley, 10th Aug Revision of July 8, 1997