Bridget Riley (born 1931, London) is a leading British artist and a central figure in the Op Art movement of the 1960s. She studied at Goldsmiths College (1949–52) and the Royal College of Art (1952–55). After beginning with impressionistic landscapes and figures, she turned to geometric abstraction, influenced by Victor Vasarely and by the optical experiments of Georges Seurat.
By 1961, Riley was creating black-and-white compositions of lines, circles, and curves that generated striking perceptual effects. Her international breakthrough came in 1965 with the Museum of Modern Art’s landmark exhibition The Responsive Eye. Two years later she introduced color, expanding the optical range of her work, and in 1968 she became the first living British painter to win the International Prize for Painting at the Venice Biennale.
Celebrated in major retrospectives worldwide, Riley’s paintings continue to shape contemporary abstraction. Through precisely calculated geometric patterns, her work engages vision itself, producing sensations of movement, rhythm, and vibration. She maintains studios in London and elsewhere, where large-scale works are realized with the assistance of her workshop.