Bridget Riley: A Very Very Person

An exceptionally informative and deftly crafted biography of an impressive woman and her equally impressive artistic accomplishments, "Bridget Riley: A Very Very Person: The Early Years" features a center section of illustrations and is an extraordinary and engaging read from beginning to end.--Julie Summers "Midwest Book Review " In "Bridget Riley: A Very Very Person--The Early Years," Paul Moorhouse, a former senior curator at the National Portrait Gallery in London, doesn't attempt a full-scale biography but instead homes in on the period between the artist's childhood and her earliest success, and makes a surprising but compelling case for the influence of landscape on Ms. Riley's distinctive style.--Ann Landi "Wall Street Journal " As Paul Moorhouse shows in this thorough and sensitive first biography, which concentrates on her early years up to the age of thirty-four, it was only after many false starts, bracing shocks and firm decisions that Riley found her way as an abstract painter in the early 1960s with her eye-dazzling lines, squares, curves, ovals, circles, stripes and zigzags in ultra-hard-edged black-and-white.--Jerome Boyd Maunsell "Times Literary Supplement " [A Very Very Person] is an entertaining and informative text that adds greatly to our understanding of a very prominent and still highly intriguing British artist.--Hyperallergic

Paul Moorhouse is an art historian and curator. He was Senior Curator at the National Portrait Gallery, London (200517) and Senior Curator at Tate, London (19852005), where he curated a major Bridget Riley retrospective exhibition in 2003. Recent books include Cindy Sherman (2014), Bridget Riley: From Life (2010), the award-winning Gerhard Richter: Painting Appearances (2009), Pop Art Portraits (2007) and Richard Long: Walking the Line (2003). Bridget Riley was born in 1931 in London, UK, and studied at Goldsmiths College (194952) and Royal College of Art, London (195255). She initially came to prominence as part of the Op art movement in the early 1960s and has been exhibiting internationally since 1962. She has had notable solo at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Serpentine Gallery, London, and Tate Britain, London. Riley was made a CBE in 1974, appointed the Companion of Honour in 1999, and received the Kaiser Ring of the City of Goslar in 2003. She currently lives and works in London.

Preface 9 1 Ancestral landscape 15 2 A very very person 27 3 Unearthly beauty 36 4 Leaving Trevemadar 45 5 First steps 52 6 Great promise 59 7 The fledgling 72 8 To Goldsmiths 78 9 Looking and drawing 85 10 The bargain not kept 96 11 Paradise and disaster 105 12 Crisis 115 13 Recovery 125 14 Developing process 168 15 A visual education 178 16 Looking becomes the subject 184 17 Italy 193 18 Into black 203 19 Movement in Squares 213 20 Gallery One 221 21 New horizons 229 22 Saint Elmos fire 236 23 Acclaim 248 Notes 260 Index 264 Photographic Credits 269