Bridget Riley – Working Drawings

If you caught the show of her work at the Hayward Gallery in 2019/2020 you may recall that one of the upper galleries contained a room of early figurative and landscape works and also a wall of preparatory drawings. This book concentrates on those working drawings and studies and how they can help to understand the genesis of the paintings and prints that Riley has made throughout her career.

These works have never been collected in one publication before and they allow the reader to follow the artist’s thought pattern from the conception of a work to the tryings out of how it might come together. The book also contains texts and interviews from various stages in Riley’s career: early essays by Gene Baro and Jennifer Licht and later conversations with Lynne Coke and Michael Harrison, as well as texts written by Riley herself.

Some of the early preparatory works contain an element of collage where elements have been paid out in overlapping sections of paper, thus allowing Riley to play around with these sections before committing to the right solution. As you might expect lots of the drawings were sketched out on graph paper in order to aid the repetition of motifs and lines. In other pieces you can see and read the pencil notes that have been made on the paper margins, or on occasion, on top of the coloured blocks.

An excellent reference book as well as a coffee table tome that allows the reader great insight into this great artist’s working practice.

Hardback. 296 pages.

Measurements:

25.5cm x 27.8cm x 4cm

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