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.

P07104 is not clearly a study for a painting: rather it seems to have emerged from an earlier painting, ‘Off’ 1963, which resembles the right-hand side of the print. Sausmarez reproduces a pen and ink study (17 x 24 5/16) for the print, which he dates 1964 (op. cit., p.37). He makes the following comment on the drawing: ‘Classic example of energy produced by the simplest means.’ Ten black bands set out at top and bottom with a regular relationship in each case, are joined to a radically compressed diagonal directional line, in which the relationship changes to a sequence of progressively increased measurements.

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.