Bridget Riley (b. 1931)
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Bridget Riley (b. 1931)

Echo

Details
Bridget Riley (b. 1931)
Echo
signed and dated 'Riley '62' (on the edge), and inscribed and dated again 'ECHO 1962/emulsion on/board (on the reverse)
oil on board
51 x 17 in. (129.5 x 43.2 cm.)
Provenance
with Robert Fraser Gallery, New York, June 1966.
with Richard Feigen Gallery, New York.
Special notice
No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis

Lot Essay

Riley began working on a series of black and white paintings in 1961. Although she only intended to make one, she continued to work on them for six years. Paul Moorhouse comments that the dominant theme of these paintings is the, 'concern with expressing emotional states using the progression and modulation of individual, contrasted visual units ... the now rapid devlopment of her work was galvanised further by a growing awareness of the optical energies latent in the units [triangles, lines, circles and curves] she was using. In the interaction of contrasted elements she saw the tendency of the formal structures she was creating to destabilise, dissolving into intense and unsettling perceptual experiences. For example, in those paintings which use periodic structures - the close repetition of similar elements - the eye is overloaded with information, is frustrated in its ability to distinguish between discrete visual sensations and, in effect, is unable to interpret the information with which it is presented. The perceptual crisis thus provoked, in which the eye and mind veer from one contradictory impression to another, results in a range of hallucinatory phenomena - from iridescence to violent movement - which appear to take place in the space between the viewer and the painting' (Exhibition catalogue, Bridget Riley, Tate Britain, London, June - September 2003, p. 15).

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