Coloured Greys 2
Coloured Greys 2
Signed Print
Bridget Riley
Screenprint, 1972
Signed Print Edition of 125
H 57cm x W 57cm
Critical Review
A rare and intriguing piece, Coloured Greys 2 was amongst American artist Bridget Riley’s earliest attempts at print making. The signed screen print, produced in 1972, sits within a transitional moment in the artist’s career, whereby the influence of Riley’s earlier monochromatic works is retained both in the dim tones of the print and in its title, whilst also simultaneously gesturing towards the artist’s upcoming venturing within the vibrancy and forcefulness of primary colours – which will later characterise her practice and for which she is best known to the public.
The print plays upon Riley’s consideration of art as a form of optical science, an idea which the artist acquired during her fine art education, and which had come down to her from the works of Pointillist French artist Georges Seurat. Like Seurat, Riley developed a striking interest in the ways in which the formal elements of painting, colour and form, which together conjoin to create an artistic narrative, could be dissected, abstracted and used to induce different optical illusions and manipulations of the viewer’s visual field, thereby activating the artwork through an illusory sensation of movement. The repetition of the horizontal geometrical pattern mischievously induces in the beholder the sensation that the lines are moving, a technique which also endows the art piece with a sense of dynamism and three-dimensionality.
