Sensation of Colour: Bridget Riley and Shizuko Yoshikawa

About

At a time when Modernist abstract art was still a largely male-dominated field, both artists engaged with its traditional principles to create new and highly contemporary perspectives on avant-garde abstraction. Combining geometrical precision with vibrant colour palettes, Riley and Yoshikawa were influenced by the new theories of phenomenology which would become central to the Minimal and Conceptual art movements of the 1960s and 70s.

The geometrical arrangement of the lines, curves, squares and circles in Bridget Riley’s exuberant compositions is animated by optical effects and visual rhythms which highlight the experiential potential of form and colour.

While Riley’s approach was grounded in the sensory experience of the world around us, Yoshikawa based her practice on the legacy of 20th century Concrete Art, according to which the form is entirely conceived from and within itself, possessing its own ‘concrete’ reality. At the same time, Yoshikawa’s tectonic permutations and animated colour theories introduced a new experimentation and playfulness which resonates with Riley’s interest in the exploration of optical phenomena experienced through the viewer.

Yoshikawa expressed her admiration for Riley’s work in a letter to her British peer. The artists met in Cologne and Zurich before Yoshikawa visited Riley in her London studio in 1988.