Life of Riley: drawings that helped make Bridget top of the Ops

1/3
12 April 2012

Bridget Riley's Op Art has been intriguing audiences for half a century. Now she is to put on show never-before-seen portraits from her student days in a new exhibition revealing how traditional life drawing is at the heart of her abstract work.

Even Riley herself had not looked at these drawings for 50 years until curator Paul Moorhouse persuaded her to open the folders from her days at Goldsmith's and the Royal College of Art for him. "Her excitement began to develop as she was looking at them," he said.

Now she has agreed to lend the works to the National Portrait Gallery to encourage young artists to take seriously the art of drawing from real life.

Mr Moorhouse said: "Everybody knows Bridget's work or thinks they do. They think that essentially it is inward-looking and doesn't have any connection with anything else.

"What this display is designed to suggest is that her work is rooted in looking, in observation."

She continues to draw regularly and regards it as the foundation of her abstracts.

She has said: "I learned to look for the structure, for the action or movement of the pose, the distribution of weight, the proportion of the body, the light-to-dark tonal scale. But the most important thing was to retain the first impressions of the whole."

The National Portrait Gallery will show 15 works dating from the early to mid-Fifties depicting Riley's family, friends and studio models in media including pencil and conté crayon.

Riley, who was 79 on Saturday, felt a great commitment to life drawing, Mr Moorhouse added.
"She wants to send a message to younger artists and say, don't neglect the importance of life drawing because it gives you structure."

Bridget Riley Portraits will be on display from May 15 until December 5.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in