Bridget Riley

Eric de Chassey

Renowned British artist Bridget Riley’s paintings have provoked powerful sensations through their formally taut, abstract compositions over the course of her more than six-decade career. In this new body of work, Riley returns to earlier ideas and takes them into further and surprising directions. As the artist has noted, “I am sometimes asked ‘What is your objective’ and this I cannot truthfully answer. I work ‘from’ something rather than ‘towards’ something. It is a process of discovery.” Since 1961, Riley has focused exclusively on seemingly simple geometric forms, such as lines, circles, curves, and squares, arrayed across a surface—whether a canvas, a wall, or paper—according to an internal logic. The resulting compositions actively engage the viewer, at times triggering sensations of vibration and movement. In the present selection, Riley advances her Measure for Measure series, her most extensive body of work to date, into a new, darker color palette—once again, changing the way we look and offering a powerful effect on our eyes. This sense of dynamism was explored to great effect in the artist’s earliest black-and-white paintings, which established the basis of her enduring formal vocabulary. In 2020, after visiting her own earlier works at her retrospective exhibition organized by the National Galleries of Scotland, Riley returned to black-and-white lozenges, adjusting the orientation of each shape to create a new visual sensation. Published on the occasion of the 2021 exhibition at David Zwirner, London, this monograph features new scholarship on the artist by art historian Éric de Chassey, who looks at how Riley’s past, in addition to the history of art, has led to this body of work.

Bridget Riley: Past into Present

Michael Bracewell

* Includes a selection of critical writings starting with David Sylvester's review of her first exhibition in 1962 and ending with Dave Hickey's foreword to her 2019 exhibition in LA* Featuring reviews, essays, statements and conversations that have been specially selected by the artist and include her own writings* This book marks the first major survey of Riley's work to be staged in Scotland and the first of its scale in the UK since 2003* Published to accompany an exhibition at the National Galleries of Scotland from June until September 2019, and at the Hayward, London, October to January 2020This landmark book reflects on almost 70 years of works by Bridget Riley (b.1931), from some of her earliest to very recent projects, providing a unique record of the work of an artist still very much at the height of her powers. Essays from leading scholars and commentators on Riley's work will make this title the authority on Riley's practice. In the last decade, Riley has continued to push her practice considerably, producing several large-scale site-specific wall paintings as well as continuing to develop new paintings. This book will explore these recent developments. It will also examine the notable influence that other artists such as Georges Seurat and Piet Mondrian have had on Riley's work. Published to accompany an exhibition taking place in the National Galleries of Scotland, running from June - September 2019.

Marcia Hafif

Le catalogue raisonné des oeuvres de la période italienne de l'artiste américaine : la totalité des quelques 500 peintures et dessins réalisés dans les années 1970 reproduites (ou, pour les oeuvres détruites ou non localisées, redessinées par Marcia Hafif d'après les notes qu'elle a conservées), un long entretien au cours duquel elle revient sur sa démarche dans le contexte culturel de cette période, une analyse de son travail dans une perspective historique par Eric de Chassey. Un ouvrage majeur pour comprendre l'histoire de l'abstraction occidentale, au travers de cette figure de la femme peintre, emblématique des mutations de l'époque.

Italian Paintings, 1961-1969

Henri Matisse

Ellsworth Kelly

Rémi Labrusse

Musée national d'art moderne (France). Galerie d'art graphique

Inverleith House, Royal Botanic Garden

This collection of work by Henri Matisse and Ellsworth Kelly is based on anxhibition of more than 100 rarely exhibited drawings organized by the Centreompidou in Paris. A comparative display, the exhibition focuses on the rolef drawing in the work of these two distinctly different 20th-century masters.Henri Matisse (1869-1954) is recognized for the lyrical form and decorativeesthetic seen in his paintings and colourful paper cut-outs. Ellsworth Kellyborn 1923) is known for the monumental abstract forms of his sculpture andhe bold colours of his hard-edge paintings. Yet both artists explored theironcepts in prolific studies of plants, often in series in which each drawingxisted on its own terms as well as part of an infinite process.

Eric de Chassey

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