Bridget Riley, Blaze 1, 1962 (Photo By Gail)

While at Goldsmith’s College in London, Bridget Riley (born 1931) became interested in the optical vibrations initiated by Georges Seurat’s Pointillist technique of the 1880s. By 1961, Riley was painting solely in Black and White, and her paintings of the early 1960s are pioneering examples of what came to be known as Op Art.

With Blaze 1 (1962), Riley applied black zigzag stripes of emulsion to a white ground to create a pattern that assaults the eye: the bands of paint create a corkscrew–like optical effect wherein the two-dimensional painting appears to both recede into the wall and to project itself into space in front of the picture plane.

Bridget Riley’s Blaze 1 is part of the permanent collection in the Modern Art wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.