BRIDGET RILEY PRINTS 1962 – 2015 Exhibition 25th February – 20th March 2015
Sims Reed Gallery The Economist Building 30 Bury Street London SW1Y 6AU T +44 (0)20 7930 5111 F +44 (0)20 7930 1555 E gallery@simsreed.com www.gallery.simsreed.com In collaboration with Karsten Schubert
FOREWORD Lyndsey Ingram We are delighted to be presenting this retrospective of prints by Bridget Riley. Her work – dynamic and absolutely unmistakable – occupies a unique place in the history of postwar art in Britain. In many ways this exhibition offers an overview of Riley’s career, as her printmaking over the last fifty years has run parallel to the developments in her painting. Riley’s imagery has consistently changed and evolved, with a relentless commitment to innovation. She is still working actively today, continuing to surprise and delight. We had the privilege of being able to choose from Riley’s complete catalogue of prints for this exhibition. Our aim was to include groups of works that are representative of specific moments and defining styles that punctuate her career. We also chose prints that have a meaningful dialogue with each other or illustrate the development from one period to another. The earliest works in the show are two of Riley’s black and white prints from the 1960s: her first print, Untitled (Based on Primitive Blaze) (1962) and Untitled (Based on Blaze) (1964). Together they illustrate the evolution of her Blaze paintings. Perhaps her most significant achievement in printmaking from this decade is her masterful series of prints on Plexiglas. Entitled Fragments (1965), the compositions initially came from ideas for paintings that were never executed. These rare early works typify Riley’s demanding visual pursuits; we are very pleased to be exhibiting the complete set. In the late 1960s, Riley’s work progressed into greys and eventually made the radical shift to colour. We have included three pivotal series that mark this passage: Nineteen Greys (1968), Elongated Triangles (1971) and Coloured Greys (1972). They are rich examples of Riley’s early experiments with how greys, coloured greys, and later pure colours, relate to each other. In some cases they vibrate and shimmer, creating new colours and movement through a seemingly static, stable medium, asking us to perceive something that is not actually there. By the 1980s, Riley worked exclusively in colour. RA 2 (1981) and Silvered 2 (1981) – both related to paintings from her Egyptian stripe series – provide a meaningful insight into her use of screenprinting to expand her investigation of the relative relationships of colour. Both prints
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use exactly the same elements, identically coloured stripes and the same number of each, which are carefully listed at the bottom of the print. However, in the two compositions Riley combines the stripes in different sequences, creating completely opposite effects from identical structural qualities of colour. The most recent work included is a group of five prints all entitled Arcadia, executed between 2010 and 2013 alongside a related body of wall paintings and canvas works. In the prints, the rigid forms in her earlier compositions give way to gracefully undulating curves that appear to glide across the picture plane. The subtle changes to the shapes, the colour sequence and the relationship to the ground, allows the pace and effect of this movement to vary between each of the five compositions. It is important to recognise the role of screenprinting in this context. Initially a crude, commercial printing method, screenprinting became popular among artists in the early 1960s, who refined the technique and began to use it in a fine art context. The screenprinting process of applying dense pigment directly on to the paper allows for strong, even colour and precise delineation of form – both essential in Riley’s work. Like many of her contemporaries Riley embraced this medium and has never strayed. Her screenprints are certainly amongst the most accomplished and technically sophisticated that have ever been made. Much of Riley’s work is about putting a single unit ‘through its paces’, as she described in an interview with Maurice de Sausmarez in 1967. In all of the works we have chosen for this exhibition, each grouping illustrates how a single unit – be it a set of colours or a specific form – can be subtly manipulated to create surprisingly different effects. We have exhibited Riley’s prints for many years and this is our first comprehensive exhibition. We are extremely grateful to Bridget Riley and her studio for lending us a number of artist’s proofs and to Karsten Schubert and his team who have provided us with advice, practical support and additional loans.
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FRAGMENTS OF A THEME Lynn MacRitchie Note: This essay was first published in Bridget Riley: Complete Prints 1962 – 2001, Ridinghouse, London, on the occasion of a survey print exhibition in 2001 at Hayward Gallery, London and touring.
Exhibitions devoted to Bridget Riley’s prints have been rare: this catalogue was produced on the occasion of only the second full survey show of her prints ever to be held. The first, ‘Silkscreen Prints 1965–78’, was organised by the Arts Council over 20 years ago and toured the UK between 1980 and 1982. And yet exhibitions of her paintings frequently also feature her gouaches, drawings and studies, and shows of such ‘works on paper’ have been numerous over the years both in the UK and abroad. Clearly, there is a concern, demonstrated by the artist and shared by her audience, that more examples of her work than just the final, finished canvases should be seen. Why then have her prints been so absent? The reason is surely to be found in Riley’s own focus on her paintings. These are the supreme centre of her activity, and all her prodigious energy and resolve is brought to bear on their creation. Their making involves, as is well known, a long and painstaking period of experimentation in the studio, as the artist arranges and rearranges the coloured paper templates she uses to work out her compositions. It is the translation of these into plans for her studio assistants, sometimes as pencil drawings with notes of colours added in the margins, sometimes as complete colour studies to be used to make the final, full sized paintings, which has been the source of the drawings and gouaches that have been so frequently exhibited with the finished paintings. These ‘works on paper’, then, really exist only as constituent parts of the whole complex process of making the paintings. They come into being not as works in themselves but as stages in the progress to the goal of the finished painting. The making of the screenprints, as such, has no place in this trajectory.
Untitled (Fragment 6) Screenprint on Plexiglas (on reverse of sheet), 1965 (detail)
Nevertheless, Riley has made screenprints throughout her career. Unusually, however, for so single minded an artist, they have frequently been made at someone else’s behest. One of her first prints, Untitled (originally called Print 1), 1962, was made after admirers of her great painting Movement in Squares, 1961, shown at her very first exhibition, suggested that it would make an ideal print. ‘I had never made a print in my life,’ Riley recalls. ‘For me prints were what you saw in the British
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Museum, with that very hand made look…’ Despite these reservations, a screenprint based on the painting was made, and the whole edition of 26 sold out. Relatively simple and inexpensive, the technology of the screenprint, as it came to be developed in England in the 1960s, meant that original works by leading artists could be reproduced in editions and sold at comparatively low prices. Artists such as Richard Hamilton and Eduardo Paolozzi took up the new medium with enthusiasm. It fitted well with their interest in commercial reproduction techniques and advertising and photographic imagery of all kinds. The series of artists’ screenprints commissioned from Kelpra Studios by the ICA in 1964 for which Riley made Untitled (Oval Image) deftly caught this mid-1960s mood. While Riley was happy to contribute to the ICA portfolio, her commitment remained centred on her painting. The following year, however, Riley herself initiated the extraordinary series of seven prints called Fragments, exhibited at the Robert Fraser Gallery. Her catalogue note sums up the role of screenprinting in her work at that time, a position which, almost 40 years on, remains unchanged. ‘During the preparatory work for a painting, I may make images which are tangential to the problems posed by the particular painting. Some of these images I return to and develop later, others remain as fragments of a theme. These prints are a selection from such fragments in my folios and cover a period from 1962–1965.’ While from the first Riley knew that any prints she made would be essentially separate from the main thrust of her work, she was also quick to recognise that they could occasionally allow her to make work in a way that could be achieved by no other means. In the case of Fragments, she used making screenprints as a way of experimenting with an entirely new material, Plexiglas, a form of transparent plastic. NEW POSSIBILITIES Artists in the early 1960s had left post-war austerity behind them and were inspired by the sense that they were creating a brave new world. ‘We were excited about trying new materials – we all wanted the new!’ Riley explains. Plexiglas, clean, clear, fresh and synthetic, symbolised this sense of a new beginning: anything was possible. But not at Kelpra. The studio, despite its considerable technical expertise, did not know how to handle the unfamiliar material. The work had to be sent out to a commercial sign printer experienced in working with plastic, for the printing was to be done directly on to the back of the plastic sheet. The black figure was
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printed first, the white ground added afterwards: the completed image was immediately visible through the transparent material. There was no need for the prints to be covered with glass, which had attracted Riley to experiment with the material in the first place. Her intuition proved sound: the transparency of the Plexiglas seems to give the prints a new sort of life, a perfect marriage of image and support. Hovering somewhere between painting and sculpture, these Fragments seem to have floated in from another world, where visual sensations can become entities in themselves. Perfectly realised, they still look as if they had been finished yesterday, dazzling in their composure and completeness. Fragments is the first instance of Riley’s engagement with screenprinting producing work which could only be made in that medium. Three years later, in the four prints Nineteen Greys A, B, C, D of 1968, Riley used screenprints to allow her to continue some of the process of visual experimentation which had culminated in the paintings Deny 1, 1966 and Deny 2, 1967. In these, she had set herself the challenge of working with warm and cool greys playing off each other, a series of oval shapes moving from dark to light grey against a contrasting grey background, setting up a diagonal rhythm against the basic horizontal and vertical axis. ‘The painting (sic) was so fantastically difficult to do, it was impossible to do justice to all the ideas,’ Riley comments. These remained tantalising possibilities in the ‘piles and piles’ of studies in the studio. By making the screenprints, Riley allowed herself to have ‘a bit more time’ with the variations she had evolved in making the paintings. By choosing to make four prints, which could be looked at together, she was able to show some of the range of other combinations which working with the nineteen greys could produce. The final appearance of the prints, with their powdery, dense surface, the greys modulating with infinite subtlety through a tonal range which seems only just to hold in check the possible colours that it suggests – from deepest red to palest blue – shows how right she was to trust that screenprinting could accommodate these particularly demanding images. Taxed to the limit – as the printing technicians most certainly were – it did not let her down. Riley’s next prints were made for much more mundane reasons. For all her magisterial intellect, Riley is also a supremely practical person, and when the technical demands of her first major retrospective in 1971 threatened to be too much for the show’s budget she suggested making a series of prints for sale to raise funds. Based on the latest paintings in the exhibition, the Elongated Triangles series of five prints were variations on
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the colour twist theme exemplified in paintings such as Zing 1 and Zing 2, 1971. Not exhibited as part of the show (which did include drawings and studies) the prints could be bought at the ticket desk – museum shops ‘hardly existed in those days’, as Riley recalls. No matter – the prints, carefully priced at around £30 to make them as affordable as possible – were a sell out. The final print, Firebird, 1971, made for the Hayward Gallery, already reflected the next development in Riley’s paintings. Horizontal in emphasis where the twists had been vertical, Firebird, with its swelling rise of scarlet against green and blue on a white ground, seems to capture the conviction and intensity of the paintings despite its much smaller scale. Riley continued to make prints throughout the 1970s, mostly closely related to her paintings of the time and in editions for sale. They were useful fund-raisers both for the artist herself and for good causes such as the Rothko Portfolio, 1973, a set of screenprints by leading artists to which she contributed a work, sold to raise money to send young artists to America. Some were shown in group exhibitions of prints, such as the beautiful Coloured Greys 1, 2 and 3, 1972, released in an edition of 125, which won the Japanese Print Biennale. A large edition of 400 was made of Wave, 1975, a dashing little swoop of pink, green and blue floating at ease on its surrounding white ground. The grand 1977 trio Green Dominance, Blue Dominance and Red Dominance could almost have been sliced out of the earlier painting Entice 1, 1974. The exquisite Rose, Bronze and Blue series, 1978, close-toned curves of soft colour like those in the Orphean Elegy paintings of the mid-1970s, proved so hard to print that the grey ground – in a different shade for each colour variation – had to be laid down after the difficult process of registering each of the delicate coloured curves against each other was complete, and a border of grey was left around the image. A CRUCIAL STATEMENT In 1981, however, Riley once more turned to the screenprint in order to make a very particular statement that could be made in that medium alone. ‘In the 1980s, I only managed to do two prints. I felt them crucial to make, because they were fundamental to my argument about colour relationships: that the same colours related in different ways could give a different range of effects.’ The two prints, Ra 2 and Silvered 2, the largest she had yet made, are composed in the colours of what has come to be called her Egyptian palette, based on colours she had first seen during a
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visit there in 1979 and which she first used in her paintings of 1981–84. And there, at the left of the lower margin of each of the prints, she has listed them in a pencil note thus: 21 Reds 21 Blues 24 Turquoises 24 Yellows 9 Blacks 8 Whites The colours named under each print are the same, but the effect of their different arrangement in the images above clearly is not. Ra 2 begins with blue at the left, but soon blossoms into warm reds and yellows clustered left of centre, cooling gradually back to blue at the right. In Silvered 2, the colours are paced evenly across the whole surface, which seems to shimmer in a pool of silvery light. The contrast is startling. But to spell out the means by which it was achieved is something unique in Riley’s work. She herself describes it as ‘the closest I’ve come to Conceptual art – the paintings weren’t about making that point but the prints were…’ A Conceptual artist such as Sol LeWitt might well have written down just such a list of colours which then might or might not have been made into an actual painting by his assistants. But LeWitt believed that ‘ what the work looks like isn’t too important… It is the process of conception and realisation with which the artist is concerned.’ While Riley would most certainly agree with the second part of that statement, she would most passionately disagree with the first. For her, the production of the finished painting by her assistants is the realisation of her concept, fully achieved only when she is satisfied that it is finally ready to be seen. For Riley, the task is always to draw the viewer’s attention to ‘the explosive facts of actually looking…’ Riley’s annotation of these two prints with the list of their colours, while it certainly acts to emphasise the visual point she wishes to make, is perhaps not so much a conceptual device as a celebration, a joyful naming of the means by which she has arrived at such visually satisfying ends. After these, no further prints were produced until the end of the 1980s. In 1989, editions were made to accompany To Midsummer, a masterpiece of her ‘zig’ series of paintings, which was also the source for Fête, 1989. Very difficult to make, the prints involved the careful registration of as many as sixteen colours. By the time of their completion, however,
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Riley had already embarked on the process of research which would lead to the emergence of a completely new series of paintings, in which the units of colour would become much larger as the paintings evolved to accommodate the introduction of a new element, the curve. In the paintings, this brought about a reorganization of the picture plane into much larger units with fewer colours. The first print in which these much bigger, simpler forms appear, was Start, 2000, made just after the related paintings Rêve and Zambezi. Going Across, 2001, produced for the magazine Parkett, captures the new openness and depth of space in paintings such as Evöe 1 and Parade 1, and also their pronounced horizontality. Composition with Circles 2, 2001, was made to accompany her exhibition at the DIA Center for the Arts in New York in the summer of 2000, and is based on a wall drawing she made there especially for the exhibition. Once again, she has been taxing her technicians to the limit: the print required the largest single screen the New York printers had ever made. This seems only fitting. Riley described her first print of 1961 as the work of ‘a very naive print maker’, adding mischievously that she has managed to remain one. She never was one, of course. She grasped the particular requirements of print making from the first, altering the original composition of Movement in Squares (which had alternate white and black squares at the top and bottom corners of the painting) to all black squares in the print to ‘hold’ the image on the page. Such understanding of the particular requirements and possibilities of the screen printed image has allowed Riley to create some of the most innovative and technically accomplished screenprints ever made, fitting companions to the great paintings, the continuing development of which they complement so well. 1. All quotes unless otherwise stated are taken from conversations with the artist conducted by the author in London in August and October 2001. 2. David Batchelor, Minimalism, Tate Publishing, London, 1997, p.47.
Untitled (Nineteen Greys C) Screenprint in colours, 1965 (detail)
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Untitled (Based on Primitive Blaze) Screenprint, 1962 Signed in pencil and numbered from the edition of 40 Plus 5 artist’s proofs Printer unknown Published by the artist (Schubert 1a) 45.7 x 45.7 cm
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Untitled (Based on Blaze) Screenprint, 1964 Signed in pencil and numbered from the edition of 50 Plus 5 artist’s proofs Printer unknown Published by the artist (Schubert 4) 52.9 x 52.1 cm
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Untitled (Fragment 1) Screenprint on Plexiglas (on reverse of sheet), 1965 Scratch signed and numbered from the edition of 75 verso Printed by Kelpra Studio, London Published by Robert Fraser Gallery, London (Schubert 5a) 67.4 x 83.9 cm
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Untitled (Fragment 2) Screenprint on Plexiglas (on reverse of sheet), 1965 Scratch signed and numbered from the edition of 75 verso Printed by Kelpra Studio, London Published by Robert Fraser Gallery, London (Schubert 5b) 71.2 x 69.3 cm
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Untitled (Fragment 3) Screenprint on Plexiglas (on reverse of sheet), 1965 Scratch signed and numbered from the edition of 75 verso Printed by Kelpra Studio, London Published by Robert Fraser Gallery, London (Schubert 5c) 62.2 x 80.5 cm ÂŁ36,000
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Untitled (Fragment 4) Screenprint on Plexiglas (on reverse of sheet), 1965 Scratch signed and numbered from the edition of 75 verso Printed by Kelpra Studio, London Published by Robert Fraser Gallery, London (Schubert 5d) 71.2 x 68.6 cm
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Untitled (Fragment 5) Screenprint on Plexiglas (on reverse of sheet), 1965 Scratch signed and numbered from the edition of 75 verso Printed by Kelpra Studio, London Published by Robert Fraser Gallery, London (Schubert 5e) 63 x 81.4 cm 26
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Untitled (Fragment 6) Screenprint on Plexiglas (on reverse of sheet), 1965 Scratch signed and numbered from the edition of 75 verso Printed by Kelpra Studio, London Published by Robert Fraser Gallery, London (Schubert 5f) 74.5 x 73.8 cm
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Untitled (Fragment 7) Screenprint on Plexiglas (on reverse of sheet), 1965 Scratch signed and numbered from the edition of 75 verso Printed by Kelpra Studio, London Published by Robert Fraser Gallery, London (Schubert 5g) 50.9 x 99.2 cm
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Untitled (La Lune en Rodage – Carlo Belloli) Screenprint, 1965 Signed in pencil and numbered from the edition of 200 Plus 10 artist’s proofs Printed by Kelpra Studio Published by Editions Panderma (Schubert 6) 31.9 x 31.9 cm £12,000
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Untitled (Winged Curve) Screenprint, 1966 Signed in pencil and numbered from the edition of 75 Plus 10 artist’s proofs Printed by Kelpra Studio, London Published by the artist (Schubert 7) 57.8 x 62.5 cm £19,500
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Untitled (Nineteen Greys A) Screenprint in colours, 1968 Signed in pencil and numbered from the edition of 75 Plus 5 artist’s proofs Printed by Kelpra Studio, London Published by the artist (Schubert 8a) 76.2 x 76.2 cm
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Untitled (Nineteen Greys B) Screenprint in colours, 1968 Signed in pencil and numbered from the edition of 75 Plus 5 artist’s proofs Printed by Kelpra Studio, London Published by the artist (Schubert 8b) 76.2 x 76.2 cm
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Untitled (Nineteen Greys C) Screenprint in colours, 1968 Signed in pencil and numbered from the edition of 75 Plus 5 artist’s proofs Printed by Kelpra Studio, London Published by the artist (Schubert 8c) 76.2 x 76.2 cm
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Untitled (Nineteen Greys D) Screenprint in colours, 1968 Signed in pencil and numbered from the edition of 75 Plus 5 artist’s proofs Printed by Kelpra Studio, London Published by the artist (Schubert 8d) 76.2 x 76.2 cm
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Untitled (Elongated Triangles 1) Screenprint in colours, 1971 Signed in pencil and numbered from the edition of 75 Plus 15 artist’s proofs Printed by Kelpra Studio, London Published by the artist (Schubert 10) 102.1 x 42.5 cm
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Untitled (Elongated Triangles 2) Screenprint in colours, 1971 Signed in pencil and numbered from the edition of 75 Plus 15 artist’s proofs Printed by Kelpra Studio, London Published by the artist (Schubert 11) 103 x 42.2 cm
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Untitled (Elongated Triangles 5) Screenprint in colours, 1971 Signed in pencil and numbered from the edition of 75 Plus 15 artist’s proofs Printed by Kelpra Studio, London Published by the artist (Schubert 13) 102.7 x 42 cm
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Coloured Greys (1) Screenprint in colours, 1972 Signed in pencil and numbered from the edition of 125 Plus 10 artist’s proofs Printed by Kelpra Studio, London Published by the artist (Schubert 16) 74.4 x 69.7 cm £9,000
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Coloured Greys (2) Screenprint in colours, 1972 Signed in pencil and numbered from the edition of 125 Plus 10 artist’s proofs Printed by Kelpra Studio, London Published by the artist (Schubert 17) 72.6 x 73.4 cm £9,000
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Coloured Greys (3) Screenprint in colours, 1972 Signed in pencil and numbered from the edition of 125 Plus 10 artist’s proofs Printed by Kelpra Studio, London Published by the artist (Schubert 18) 69.8 x 73.3 cm £9,000
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Untitled (Blue) Screenprint in colours, 1978 Signed in pencil and numbered from the edition of 75 Plus 20 artist’s proofs Printed by Graham Henderson, London Published by the artist (Schubert 25) 67.9 x 95.2 cm
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Untitled (Bronze) Screenprint in colours, 1978 Signed in pencil and numbered from the edition of 75 Plus 20 artist’s proofs Printed by Graham Henderson, London Published by the artist (Schubert 26) 67.9 x 94.6 cm £8,500
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Untitled (Rose) Screenprint in colours, 1978 Signed in pencil and numbered from the edition of 75 Plus 20 artist’s proofs Printed by Graham Henderson, London Published by the artist (Schubert 27) 67.9 x 95.2 cm
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RA 2 (21 Reds, 21 Blues, 24 Turquoises, 24 Yellows, 9 Blacks, 8 Whites) Screenprint in colours, 1981 Signed in pencil and numbered from the edition of 75 Plus 20 artist’s proofs Printed by Sally Gimson, Artizan Editions, Hove Published by the artist (Schubert 28) 106.6 x 93.2 cm 62
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Silvered 2 (21 Reds, 21 Blues, 24 Turquoises, 24 Yellows, 9 Blacks, 8 Whites) Screenprint in colours, 1981 Signed in pencil and numbered from the edition of 75, Plus 20 artist’s proofs Printed by Sally Gimson, Artizan Editions, Hove Published by the artist (Schubert 29) 106.6 x 93.2 cm
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Serpentine Print Screenprint in colours, 1999 Signed in pencil and numbered from the edition of 200 Plus 20 artist’s proofs Printed by Sally Gimson and Angus Wade, Artizan Editions, Hove Published by the artist (Schubert 39) 42 x 40.5 cm £5,000
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Edge of Light Screenprint in colours, 1981 – 2003 Signed in pencil and numbered from the edition of 85 Plus 20 artist’s proofs Printed by Sall Gimson and Angus Wade, Artizan Editions, Hove Published by the artist (Schubert 55) 105 x 90 cm £12,000
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Red Screenprint in colours, 2005 Signed in pencil and numbered from the edition of 75 Plus 10 artist’s proofs Printed by Angus Wade, Artizan Editions, Hove Published by the artist (Schubert 59) 44.7 x 91 cm £6,000 70
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Passing By Screenprint in colours, 2005 Signed in pencil and numbered from the edition of 75 Plus 10 artist’s proofs Printed by Sally Gimson, Artizan Editions, Hove Published by the artist (Schubert 60) 44.5 x 98.9 cm £4,000
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From One to the Other Screenprint in colours, 2005 Signed in pencil and numbered from the edition of 75 Plus 10 artist’s proofs Printed by Sally Gimson and Angus Wade, Artizan Editions, Hove Published by the artist (Schubert 61) 44.5 x 99 cm £4,000
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Between the Two Screenprint in colours, 2005 Signed in pencil and numbered from the edition of 75 Plus 10 artist’s proofs Printed by Sally Gimson and Angus Wade, Artizan Editions, Hove Published by the artist (Schubert 62) 49.2 x 91.4 cm £4,000
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Large Fragment Screenprint in colours, 2006 Signed in pencil and numbered from the edition of 50 Plus 10 artist’s proofs Printed by Angus Wade, Artizan Editions, Hove Published by the artist (Schubert 64) 128.3 x 109.2 cm £11,500
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Large Fragment 2 Screenprint in colours, 2009 Signed in pencil and numbered from the edition of 50 Plus 10 artist’s proofs Printed by Angus Wade, Artizan Editions, Hove Published by the artist (Schubert 71) 149.9 x 106 cm £11,500
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One Small Step Screenprint in colours, 2009 Signed in pencil and numbered from the edition of 300 Plus 30 artist’s proofs Printed by Sally Gimson, Artizan Editions, Hove Published by the artist (Schubert 70) 44.1 x 29.1 cm £3,000
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Red Red Blue Screenprint in colours, 2010 Signed in pencil and numbered from the edition of 75 Plus 10 artist’s proofs Printed by Sally Gimson, Artizan Editions, Hove Published by the artist (Schubert 73) 59.5 x 91.5 cm £5,000
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Composition with Circles 7 (First Version) Inkjet print, 2011 Signed in pencil and numbered from the edition of 50 Plus 10 artist’s proofs Printed by Prudence Cuming, London Published by the artist (Schubert 75) 56 x 128 cm
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Sideways Screenprint in colours, 2011 Signed in pencil and numbered from the edition of 250 Plus 25 artist’s proofs Printed by Angus Wade, Artizan Editions, Hove Published by the artist (Schubert 76) 46.2 x 32.5 cm £3,000
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And About Screenprint in colours, 2011 Singed in pencil and numbered from the edition of 120 Plus 20 artist’s proofs Printed by Angus Wade, Artizan Editions, Hove Published by the artist (Schubert 77) 71 x 55.4 cm £5,000
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After Wall Painting (Arcadia 3) Screenprint in colours, 2010 Signed in pencil and numbered from the edition of 75 Plus 10 artist’s proofs Printed by Sally Gimson, Artizan Editions, Hove Published by the artist (Schubert 74) 56 x 92.8 cm £4,000
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Arcadia 4 Screenprint in colours, 2013 Signed in pencil and numbered from the edition of 75 Plus 10 artist’s proofs Printed by Sally Gimson and Angus Wade, Artizan Editions, Hove Published by the artist 64.4 x 89 cm £4,000
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Arcadia 5 Screenprint in colours, 2013 Signed in pencil and numbered from the edition of 75 Plus 10 artist’s proofs Printed by Sally Gimson and Angus Wade, Artizan Editions, Hove Published by the artist 64.4 x 89 cm £4,000
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Arcadia 6 Screenprint in colours, 2013 Signed in pencil and numbered from the edition of 75 Plus 10 artist’s proofs Printed by Sally Gimson and Angus Wade, Artizan Editions, Hove Published by the artist 64.4 x 89 cm £4,000
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Arcadia 7 Screenprint in colours, 2013 Signed in pencil and numbered from the edition of 75 Plus 10 artist’s proofs Printed by Sally Gimson and Angus Wade, Artizan Editions, Hove Published by the artist 64.4 x 89 cm £4,000
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SELECTED EXHIBITIONS 2014 ‘Bridget Riley’, The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, US 2010 ‘Bridget Riley: Paintings and Related Work’, National Gallery, London, UK 2008 ‘Bridget Riley: Rétrospective’, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, France 2003 ‘Bridget Riley: Retrospective’, Tate Britain, London, UK ‘Bridget Riley’, Galerie Beyeler, Basel, Switzerland 1999 ‘Bridget Riley: Paintings from the 1960s and 1970s’, Serpentine Gallery, London, UK 1980 ‘Bridget Riley: Works 1959–78’, National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Japan; Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, Australia; Centrepoint Gallery Space, Sydney, Australia; Neuberger Museum, Purchase, NY, US; Museum of Fine Arts, Dallas, TX, US; Albright Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY, US 1973 ‘Bridget Riley: Paintings and Drawings’ 1961–1973, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester; Mappin Art Gallery, Sheffield; DLI Museum and Arts Centre, Durham; Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh; City Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham; Museum and Art Gallery, Letchworth; City Art Gallery, Bristol, and Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol, UK 1971 ‘Bridget Riley: Paintings and Drawings’ 1951–71, Kunsthalle Bern, Bern, Germany; Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Dusseldorf, Germany; Kunstverein Hannover, Hanover, Germany; Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna, Turin, Italy; Hayward Gallery, London, UK; National Gallery, Prague, Czech Republic. 1968 British Pavilion (with Philip King), 34th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy; Städtische Kunstgalerie, Bochum, Germany; Museum Boijmans Van Beuninigen, Rotterdam, The Netherlands 1966 ‘Bridget Riley: Drawings’, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, US
Bridget Riley in front of Justinian, 1988 (Unknown photographer)
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Art has to be expressive of the urgency and failure, love and inadequacy that drive human endeavour. (Bridget Riley, ‘According to Sensation’, 1990)
Published by Sims Reed Gallery on the occasion of the exhibition BRIDGET RILEY PRINTS 1962 – 2015 25th February – 20th March 2015 © All rights reserved. No part of the contents of this catalogue may be reproduced in whole or in part, without the permission from the publisher Sims Reed Gallery All images © Bridget Riley 2015. All rights reserved, courtesy Karsten Schubert, London Designed by Lucy Harbut Printed by Dayfold