Riley was born in Norwood, London, the child of a businessman. Her early years were spent in Cornwall and Lincolnshire. She completed her studies at Goldsmiths’ College from 1949 to 1952, and at the Royal College of Art from 1952 to 1955. Initially, she focused on painting figures in a semi-impressionist fashion, but later transitioned to pointillism in 1958, mainly producing landscapes. It was in 1960 when she developed a unique style, exploring the dynamic potential of optical phenomena. These pieces, known as ‘Op-art’, such as her renowned work Fall, 1963 (currently displayed at the Tate Gallery T00616), have a bewildering effect on the viewer’s eye.
Prior to her successful art career, Riley taught children for two years before joining the Loughborough School of Art, where she initiated a basic design course in 1959. She then went on to teach at Hornsey School of Art, and from 1962, at Croydon School of Art. While pursuing her career in art, she also worked for the J. Walter Thompson Group advertising agency in 1960. However, in 1963-1964, she left teaching and advertising to fully dedicate herself to her art.
Riley has exhibited in several group shows, including Young Contemporaries in London in 1955; Diversion at the South London Art Gallery in 1958; an Arts Council Touring Exhibition in 1962; Tooth’s Critics Choice Exhibition, curated by Edward Lucie-Smith, in 1963; John Moores’ Exhibition in Liverpool in 1963; The New Generation at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1964; Movement at the Hanover Gallery in London in 1964; Painting and Sculpture of a Decade 1954-1964 at the Tate Gallery in 1964; and Op Art, which toured Ireland in 1967. She has had numerous exhibitions in Europe and America, including The Sixties Collection Revisited at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art in Ridgefield, Connecticut in 1978.
Riley has received several prestigious awards and recognition for her work, including the AICA Critics Prize in 1963 and a John Moores’ Liverpool Open Section prize in the same year. In 1964, she was awarded a Peter Stuyvesant Foundation Travel bursary to the USA. In 1968, she received an International Painting Prize at the Venice Biennale.
www.ftn-books.com has several Riley items now available.
