Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert is delighted to announce a forthcoming loan exhibition of early black and white works by Bridget Riley this May. Marking 60 years since Riley’s inclusion in the landmark 1965 exhibition The Responsive Eye at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the presentation will be held at Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert’s New York exhibition space and will include an impressive selection of paintings and drawings dating from 1961 through to 1966.

 

The exhibition at MoMA was of huge consequence to Riley’s career and subsequent international reputation. It was a powerful endorsement by the great institution, which reproduced Current (1964) on the catalogue cover and whose curator, William C. Setiz, singled the artist out in the catalogue essay. The years surrounding this watershed moment were defined by a prolific period of experimentation. In 1961, Riley began her practice of pure abstraction in a limited palette of black and white, an aesthetic enquiry that lasted until 1966 when the artist began to introduce red and blue into her work.

 

The exhibition is curated with the support of Bridget Riley and her studio and will include six important black and white paintings: Horizontal Vibrations [First Version] (1961), Black to White Discs (1962), Burn (1964), Pause (1964), White Discs 2 (1964), and Blaze 4 (1964). Displayed alongside related works on paper, the show will provide insight into this important period. The unique vocabulary that Riley established between these years – the manipulation and combination of fundamental shapes to trigger internal patterns of seeing – are the principles that have sustained her entire output and continue to occupy her practice to this day.

 

Opening hours: 

Everyday 10.30am – 7pm

 

17 East 76th Street #2
New York
NY 10021

 

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