Art News: Bridget Riley Sets Auction Record With Streak 2 at £5.2 Million

Bridget Riley's Streak 2 sold at Christie's in London on Wednesday 14 October for £5,214,000 ($6.9 million) with fees, a new auction record for the artist. The painting, made in 1979 and about two and a half metres long, was hotly contested in the sale of Monsoon: The Peter Simon Collection, the single-owner auction of the Monsoon founder's collection. It beat her previous auction high of about £4.4 million, and the three Riley paintings in the sale made £8.8 million between them.

Bridget Riley's Late Morning, 1967–8, at Tate Britain, 2011. Photo: Txllxt TxllxT, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Ka 4 at Bonhams the next day

On Thursday 15 October Bonhams sold Ka 4, an oil on linen of 1980, 76 by 67 cm, for £915,500 with fees in its evening sale on New Bond Street. The Ka paintings brought Riley back to the vertical stripe after a decade of curves, in a palette of blue, turquoise, ochre, brick red, black and white that she took from a trip to Egypt in the winter of 1979 to 1980.

Riley was born in London in 1931. This year she has a solo exhibition at Dia Beacon in New York, and she gave Concerto I, a painting of 2024, to Tate, which showed it at Tate Britain until June.

The Bridget Riley retrospective at the Hayward Gallery, London, January 2020. Photo: Robin Stott, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

What it means for prints

Paintings at this level are rare, and most owners hold her screenprints, published from the 1960s in editions usually of 75 to 150. Their whole effect depends on exact relationships between neighbouring colours, so even slight fading changes what a sheet is worth: two impressions from the same edition, one kept in a folder and one hung in a sunny room, are not the same thing to a buyer. Our Op art page covers the movement she is best known for.

If you own a painting, print or study by Riley and are thinking of selling, send us photographs for a free valuation. There is no obligation to sell, and we act for you rather than for the saleroom.

Cover: detail of Rose Rose, Bridget Riley's poster for the London 2012 Olympic Games. Photo: Paul Farmer, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.