Art History meets Art Science

By the early 1960s, Bridget Riley’s artwork had shifted entirely to abstraction, and she was testing the limits of visual perception. She pored over the colour theories of 19th-century painter Georges Seurat, fascinated by how tiny dots of paint could blend into vivid images​. She also absorbed contemporary research on how the human eye processes movement and contrast​. Drawing on this science, Riley composed intricate black-and-white patterns with almost mathematical precision, aiming to trigger optical illusions of movement​. Circles, stripes and triangles were meticulously arranged to create what one commentator called “a choreographed dance of geometry and perception.”

In 1962, Riley debuted these radical experiments in her first solo exhibition at Gallery One in London​. The response was immediate: critics praised the young artist’s originality, and she won a major art prize the next year​. Word of her Op Art paintings soon spread beyond Britain. Just a few years later, in 1965, Riley’s canvases captivated America as the surprise sensation of The Responsive Eye. Museum-goers marvelled at how her high-contrast geometric paintings seemed to flicker and move on their own​. Viewers often felt unsteady on their feet – the optical illusions Bridget Riley created could make a static surface appear to tilt or shudder. In an era hungry for new forms of expression, these works made Bridget Riley an international star virtually overnight.

What is ‘Op Art’?

Op Art – short for “optical art” – is a movement that emerged in the mid-20th century, focusing on how line, pattern, and colour can deceive or trick the eye. Far from being a mere visual trick, however, Op Art challenges viewers to question the reliability of their own senses. Riley helped spearhead this genre, sharing its spotlight with artists like Victor Vasarely. The goal is not to replicate reality but to explore how carefully orchestrated shapes can produce the illusion of motion, depth, or vibration. The science behind Riley’s optical illusions lies in her understanding of how the human eye organises information. Through extensive preparatory drawings and studies, she learned to manipulate spacing and colour so that shapes appear to shift or shimmer when the viewer moves or even when one’s gaze remains fixed.

Alongside artists in the Italian Futurist and French Modernist traditions, Riley pushed beyond classical forms, embracing the dynamic possibilities of illusion. The resulting works – often featuring repeating lines, curves, stripes, or geometric patterns – can cause flickering effects, creating an interactive experience between Bridget Riley art and its viewers. These illusions underscore the fragile interplay between what we see and what we think we see, a scientific inquiry that has aligned Riley’s aesthetic studies with broader cultural fascinations in psychology and neuroscience.

After conquering black and white, Riley made a bold transition in 1967: she introduced color into her work​. This opened new possibilities for optical play. Influenced by Henri Matisse’s adventurous use of hue and fluid forms​ – and by Seurat’s lessons in optical mixing – she began to deploy colour as a tool to energise the eye. Her subsequent paintings unleashed vibrating stripes and sinuous curves in bright palettes, adding a fresh sensory dimension to the perceptual games on her canvas. Carefully calibrated sequences of colour produced sensations of depth and shifting light, expanding the Op Art vocabulary she had helped invent, culminating in vibrant series like Lozenges, Stripes, and Waves. In these pieces, fluid forms and overlapping hues create a sense of undulating space, reminiscent of her formative experiences with the Cornish coastline.

Bridget Riley’s artwork

Key exhibitions have cemented her position as one of Britain’s most influential living painters. In 1968, at the Venice Biennale, Bridget Riley’s innovations earned her the prestigious International Painting Prize – making her the first woman to receive that honour​. By then she was firmly established as a leading voice in contemporary art. In the decades that followed, she continued to explore new configurations of form and color. What remained constant was her focus on the act of seeing: each series she developed was another inquiry into how subtle changes in line and hue can alter a viewer’s experience of space and motion. Later shows, such as her 2015 retrospective at the De La Warr Pavilion and a major 2003 survey at Tate Britain, traced the evolution of her artworks throughout decades of innovation.

Her many successes have helped propel Op Art from a niche experiment into a global art movement​. Generations of younger artists have looked to Riley as a trailblazer. Celebrated figures like Damien Hirst and Rachel Whiteread cite her as an inspiration, drawn to her fearless experimentation and the almost physical impact of her imagery​. 

Even today, well into her 90s, Bridget Riley remains a vital presence in art. Bridget Riley’s paintings, now populating museum collections worldwide, have lost none of their power to arrest the eye. Collectors, too, still feel the pull: in 2016 her 1966 canvas Untitled (Diagonal Curve) sold at auction for £4.3 million, a record price for her work​. It’s a reminder that decades after her 1960s debut, the appeal of Riley’s vision endures. The optical illusions that astonished viewers half a century ago still captivate audiences – proof that this Op Art master’s exploration of perception has left a living legacy.​