Woman at Tea-table

Bridget Riley is best known for her singular ‘Op Art’ pieces of work, which produce a disorientating effect on the eye of the viewer. She began these in the 1960s and they were the works which propelled her to international recognition. In the 1950s she had moved from figurative painting to a more semi-impressionistic style. This work is so interesting because it shows the artist is developing her style towards those later canvases for which she is so well known. The artist’s intense use of colour and engagement with looking at the world around her remain the same in these early works as they do in her later abstract pieces. Normally these works are excluded from the narrative of Bridget Riley’s career but the recent retrospective at the Hayward Gallery in London included a selection of these early works because they are considered the key to tracing the origins and understanding the evolving nature of her art.

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Coloured crayons and pastel

48.2 x 73.7cm

134

© Bridget Riley. Image courtesy of The Ingram Collection

This work is part of The Ingram Collection of Modern British & Contemporary Art and was on loan to the Lightbox for the exhibition "Redressing the balance: Women Artists from The Ingram Collection" (11 August - 20 September 2020).