Bridget Riley

Bridget Riley is a British artist whose paintings transform optical perception into an active and unstable experience. Through repeated lines, geometric structures, tonal contrasts and precisely organised colour, Riley creates surfaces that appear to vibrate, expand and move beyond the limits of the canvas.

Emerging as a central figure of Op Art during the 1960s, Riley initially worked in black and white before developing increasingly complex relationships between colour, rhythm and spatial tension. Paintings such as Movement in Squares, Fall and Cataract 3 demonstrate how apparently simple visual systems can generate intense physical sensations.

Her work does not depict movement as an image. It produces movement through the viewer’s act of looking, making perception part of the artwork itself. The eye attempts to stabilise the composition while the painting continually resists that stability.

This archive collects articles and critical readings on Bridget Riley, Op Art, optical abstraction, colour, movement, perception and her continuing influence on contemporary painting and visual culture.