Name: Sylvan
Brand: Bridget Riley
Rating: 5 (236 reviews)

Track auction value trend

The value of Bridget Riley's Sylvan (signed) is estimated to be worth between £6,000 and £9,500. This screenprint, created in 2000, has shown consistent value growth, with an average annual growth rate of 12%. This work has an impressive auction history, having been sold 16 times since its initial sale on 19th October 2005. In the last 12 months, the average selling price was £6,500, across 2 sales. Over the past five years, the hammer price has varied from £4,167 in September 2020 to £8,500 in March 2021. The edition size of this artwork is limited to 75.

Meaning & Analysis

Sylvan (2000), a signed screen print by Bridget Riley, was released in an edition of 75. Although non-representational, composed of the serpentine shapes belonging to Riley's Lozenges series, Sylvan nevertheless generates abstract movement; the viewer traces the many transitions between carnivalesque colours across interlocking forms.

Composed of four colours in interlocking planes, the forms constituting Sylvan are elegant and serpentine, evoking a sense of disembodied movement. This carnival of colours: blue, green, yellow and orange, is redolent of a dance. Colour in this series, like Riley’s other series, is declaratively interactive: each hue seems to change pitch and tone depending on its neighbours. Far removed from Riley’s monochromatic origins, Riley’s Lozenges work sees the abstract artist at her most confident with colour.

Of her work, Riley stated the viewer’s eye “should feel caressed and soothed, experience frictions and ruptures, glide and drift. One moment there will be nothing to look at and the next second the canvas seems to refill, to be crowded with visual events”.