Yale Center for British Art, New Haven
March 2022
March 3–July 24, 2022
Selected by the artist and displayed on two floors, the works in the exhibition Bridget Riley: Perceptual Abstraction comprise the largest survey of Riley's work in the United States in twenty years. The show opens with an in-depth examination of Riley's seminal monochrome paintings of the 1960s on the third floor and presents the full range of her oeuvre in color on the second floor. Assembling Riley's most iconic paintings alongside rarely seen works, the exhibition traces the evolution of her deep engagement with the fundamentals of visual perception.
“Looking carefully at paintings is the best training you can have as a young painter,” Riley has said of her deep appreciation of the work of painters of the past. Subsequently, for this exhibition, she has selected an oil study by John Constable from the Yale Center for British Art and a watercolor by Eugène Delacroix from the Yale University Art Gallery to hang alongside her own work.
The Yale Center for British Art will offer free of charge a digital publication, Bridget Riley: Perceptual Abstraction, which explores Riley's long and prolific career—her early, energetic black-and-white work, her experimentation with gray, and her signature innovations with color and arresting patterns. The catalogue includes essays by Maryam Ohadi-Hamadani, Bridget Riley, and Rachel Stratton.