Untitled (following ‘Paean’, ‘Canticle’ and ‘Pastorale’)

Bridget Riley, in her 2009 essay “Work,” wrote: 
For the last fifty years, it has been my belief that as a Modern artist you should make a contribution to the art of your time, if only a small one. When I was young, the situation was very different. Abstract painting hung like a mirage in the desert. The door had been pushed open by a small number of visionary artists – mainly Mondrian, Kandinsky, Malevich, Rodchenko. Although travelling by different routes, each had arrived at what was virtually a common core. Having discarded the figure and nature, what remained? Colour as colour itself, those simple shapes and forms that geometry and writing provided, and the material facts. (Riley 2021, 131)

Riley, Bridget. 2021. Bridget Riley Working Drawings. New York: The Bridget Riley Art Foundation and Thames & Hudson Inc.