Bridget Riley: the origins of Op Art

The exhibition Point de départ retraces the origins of the visual language of British artist Bridget Riley. A central figure in Op Art, Riley is known for her geometric compositions in which lines, shapes and colors generate optical vibrations and sensations of movement. The exhibition explores the formative moment of her research, linked to her encounter with Georges Seurat. In the 1950s, Riley was deeply struck by the close study of the French master’s works and by the power of his pointillist technique. The copy she made of The Bridge at Courbevoie, which still hangs in her studio today, represents the true starting point of a method that combines observation, analysis and personal reinterpretation. Curated by Sylvain Amic, president of the Musée d’Orsay and the Musée de l’Orangerie, together with Nicolas Gausserand, the show sets Riley’s early experiments alongside Seurat’s paintings, highlighting how the post-Impressionist lesson was transformed into a new abstract language. Drawings, paintings and preparatory studies document the years in which the artist developed her own visual grammar, grounded in perception and the effects of color. In this dialogue, Paris becomes the ideal setting to demonstrate how the legacy of nineteenth-century painting continued to generate new forms in the twentieth century. Op Art, a term popularized in the 1960s, is an artistic movement that investigates the mechanisms of visual perception through geometric patterns, chromatic contrasts and optical illusions. Emerging in parallel with new scientific and psychological research on vision, it reached international recognition with major group exhibitions of the time, such as The Responsive Eye at MoMA in New York in 1965. Riley was among the leading figures of this scene: her early black-and-white works and later her explorations in color, characterized by waves, diagonals and vibrating forms, became emblematic of a period in which art challenged the limits of perception and turned the viewer into an active participant in the work. Born in London in 1931, Riley has built an international career by exploring the boundaries of perception and the ability of the image to engage the viewer in a direct and immersive way. Point de départ allows us to return to the origins of this journey, revealing not only the influences she absorbed but also the creative independence with which she transformed them.