Portrait of the British artist Bridget Riley, 1964 (b/w photo) by Riley, Bridget (b.1931); Private Collection; © The Lewinski Archive at Chatsworth.
Honoring the 60th anniversary of Bridget Riley’s inclusion in the 1965 exhibition The Responsive Eye at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert has curated a showing featuring a selection of the artist’s black-and-white paintings and drawings dating from 1961 to 1966.
The works stem from a period of inventive experimentation for Riley. The artist began her creative plunge into the pure abstraction of a limited palette of black and white in 1961 and continued that aesthetic study until 1966, when she welcomed red and blue into her work. Her inclusion in the MoMA exhibition at this stage was a watershed moment for the artist’s career and international reputation. Amplifying the honor, her work Current (1964) was featured on the catalog cover and curator William C. Seitz singled Riley out in his catalog essay.
Bridget Riley. Pause, 1964, emulsion on board, 44″ x 42″
The vocabulary Riley worked to establish during these influential years addressed the manipulation and combination of fundamental shapes to trigger internal patterns of seeing. These are the principles that have supported her ongoing creative output through to today, and the Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert exhibit provides insight into this important period.
The new exhibition was curated with the support of Riley and her studio. It includes six black-and-white paintings on loan from private collections – Horizontal Vibrations [First Version] (1961), Black to White Discs (1962), Burn (1964), Pause (1964), White Discs 2 (1964), and Blaze 4 (1964) – that will be displayed alongside related works on paper.
Bridget Riley: The Responsive Eye
May 5 – May 16, 2025
Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert
17 East 76th Street #2, New York
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