BRIDGET RILEY CH CBE
Born London 1931
Ref: CD 122
Study for Recollection
Signed, dated and inscribed lower left and right:
Study for Recollection / Bridget Riley '86
Gouache: 26 x 25 ⅜ in / 66 x 64.5 cm
Frame size: 31 ½ x 30 ½ in / 80 x 77.5 cm
In a waxed wooden frame
Provenance:
Karsten Schubert, London [BR 12];
private collection, purchased at the 1992 exhibition
Exhibited:
London, Karsten Schubert, Bridget Riley: Works on Paper 1980-92, 15th October-14th November 1992, p.14, illus. in colour p.15
This wonderful gouache is a preparatory work on paper for a large oil on canvas of the same name (64 ⅞ x 63 in, BR 302, location unknown). Speaking on the subject of titles in her paintings, Riley describes naming them ‘according to their spirit…I usually draw on memory, memories of sensations in the past which have some sort of correspondence with those in the painting.’[1] In the present work, and its corresponding oil, Riley refers to the process of remembrance itself.
Study for Recollection was painted in 1986, a critical year in the artist’s development, during which Riley introduced a diagonal movement, from bottom left to top right, disrupting the vertical structure of her Egyptian Stripe series and creating a field of rhomboid planes with an unprecedented range of colours. Riley later recalled, ‘Eventually I found what I was looking for in the conjunction of the vertical and diagonal. This conjunction was the new form. It could be seen as a patch of colour – acting almost like a brush mark. When enlarged, these formal patches become coloured planes that could take up different positions in space.’[2] The Rhomboid paintings, beginning with Broken gaze and Gentle edge, 1986, characterized by a more complex colour orchestration and greater sense of movement and depth, would dominant Riley’s work into the late 1990s.
[1] Bridget Riley in conversation with Alex Farquharson, ‘Something to Look At’ [1995], cited in Robert Kudielka (ed) The Eye’s Mind: Bridget Riley Collected Writings 1965-1999, Thames & Hudson, London 1999, p.128.
[2] The artist cited in, Bridget Riley Flashback, exh cat, Hayward Gallery, London 2009, p.18.
