Bridget Riley

Bridget Riley b. 1934

P07104-P07110 Fragments 1965

Each print inscribed ‘Riley 65’ b.l.
Screenprints on plexiglass.
P07104 Fragment 1/7: 26½ x 33 (67.3 x 83.8).
P07105 Fragment 2/10: 28 x 27¼ (71.1 x 69.2).
P07106 Fragment 3/11: 24¾ x 31¿ (62.9 x 81).
P07107 Fragment 4/6: 28 x 27 (71.1 x 68.6).
P07108 Fragment 5/8: 24¾ x 32 (62.9 x 81.2).
P07109 Fragment 6/9: 29¼ x 29 (74.3 x73.7).
P07110 Fragment 7/5: 20 x 39 (50.8 x 99).
Purchased from the Rowan Gallery (Gytha Trust) 1970.
Lit: Maurice de Sausmarez, Bridget Riley, 1970, repr. (iv) pl.47, (vi) pl.II.

The title ‘Fragments’ is significant in that most of the prints consist of images which the artist arrived at through making studies for paintings. (She was at this period working almost exclusively in black and white). In selecting perspex as the ground Riley was clearly interested in setting a dense black image upon an intensely white and brilliant surface.

‘White Discs I’ 1964 is explicitly the model for P07109. Both the paintings ‘White Discs I’ and ‘White Discs II’ 1964 and the print P07109, because of the black discs, cause after-images to appear like ‘luminous explosions’ on the white surface. The three sizes of discs have been carefully chosen to generate different weights of after-image.

This suite was published by the Robert Fraser Gallery and printed at the Kelpra Studio in an edition of 75.

Published in The Tate Gallery Report 1970–1972, London 1972.