Fragment 5/8

Location

Country: Chile
City: Santiago
Place: British Embassy

A grouping of black and white curved lines arch across a white ground. Fragment 5/8 is from a suite of seven screenprints by Bridget Riley made in 1965, published by the Robert Fraser Gallery in an edition of 75. During this period Riley was working almost exclusively in black and white. She chose to title this series Fragments as they represent images that she developed while making studies for paintings which at the time were partly associated with the Op Art movement.
Producing the prints on Perspex allowed Riley to set dense, precise black images against a brilliant white surface. The series was printed by Kelpra Studio, a screenprinting workshop established in 1957 by wife and husband Rose Kelly and Chris Prater, in Kentish Town. Initially working off an old kitchen table, making prints for theatres and arts organisations, their first artist print was for Gordon House in 1959, and their breakthrough came with the 1963 print Adonis in Y fronts for Pop artist Richard Hamilton. From there onwards Kelpra Studio came to define the 1960s London print scene working with artists including Gillian Ayres, Allen Jones, R.B. Kitaj and Peter Blake.

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

abstract

Materials & Techniques

plexiglas, screenprint

Artist

Bridget Riley (1931 - )

Title

Fragment 5/8

Edition

from an edition of 75

Date

1965

Medium

Screenprint on plexiglas

Dimensions

height: 59.50 cm, width: 79.00 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from Rowan Gallery, March 1969

GAC number

8332