Bridget Riley

These works mark a major new departure for the artist who over the last decade has worked on her large series of zig paintings which were first exhibited at the Hayward Gallery in 1992. In the new works Riley introduces curved shapes growing out of the diagonal lozenges and uses a much more limited palette. The results are paintings of startling boldness and dynamism. Lynn MacRitchie has written: “[the new works] have odd, almost awkward, shapes in them, big bold lozenges and bellying curlicues which seem on the point of detaching themselves from the composition to float free. The taut, poised pictorial structure which holds the unfamiliar shapes like butterflies pinned to the picture plane is tested in these canvases as it has never been before.”