Rose Rose

Location

Country: Japan
City: Tokyo
Place: British Embassy

Bridget Riley is renowned for her optically vibrant paintings, many of which feature a series of parallel stripes or lines. The colours and geometric shapes in her paintings are carefully considered to create the illusion of movement and light. For Rose Rose, Riley arranged the colours in horizontal bars, a visual device that suggests the lines of athletic tracks or swimming lanes. The zinging movement between the colours effortlessly expresses the energy and excitement of the Games. This work is part of a set of limited-edition prints, commissioned from some of the UK’s most critically acclaimed artists to celebrate London hosting the 2012 Olympic Games and Paralympics. A set of these prints was presented to the Government Art Collection.

In other examples of her work, including Reflection (1982), a painting in the Government Art Collection, Riley produced compositions of vertical stripes. The 1980s also marked her switch from working in acrylic to oil paint, a medium that allowed her to explore what she calls the ‘plastic’ or spatial qualities of colour.

Bridget Riley was born in London and studied at Goldsmiths College and the Royal College of Art, London, in the 1950s. In 1965, her work came to international attention following her participation in the acclaimed Op Art exhibition 'The Responsive Eye', at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. In 1968, Riley became the first contemporary British artist, and the first woman, to win the International Prize at the Venice Biennale. She went on to exhibit and travel widely around the world during the 1970s and ‘80s. Her exploration of the relationships between colour, form and her perception of the natural world continue to be central to her work today. Riley was appointed a Companion of Honour in 1999 with a major retrospective of her work held at the Tate in 2003. Riley has written extensively about her work, including 'The Eye’s Mind: Bridget Riley: Collected Writings 1965–2009', co-authored with Robert Kudielka. In 2012, Riley was officially awarded the 12th Rubens Prize from the city of Siegen, Germany, an award presented every five years to a painter living in Europe in honour of their lifetime artistic accomplishment. In 2016, a year-long major exhibition celebrating 50 years of painting by Riley opened at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh. A full retrospective of Riley’s paintings, prints and drawings opened at the Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh in the summer of 2019, travelling on to the Hayward Gallery, London, that autumn.

Places

Subjects

olympic games

Materials & Techniques

screenprint

Artist

Bridget Riley (1931 - )

Title

Rose Rose

Portfolio Title

London 2012

Edition

HDC 2/10

Date

2011

Medium

Screenprint

Dimensions

height: 76.00 cm, width: 60.00 cm

Acquisition

Presented by the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, October 2011

Inscription

below image, l: Rose Rose HDC / 2/10 ; below image, r: Bridget Riley '11

Provenance

London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (gift)

GAC number

18422/5