Bridget Riley, Concerto I, 2024. Tate, Presented by the artist 2025 © Bridget Riley 2025. All rights reserved
Tate announced today that it has received the gift of a major recent painting by Bridget Riley (b.1931), one of the most influential artists of our time. Premiering at Tate Britain as part of a new display of Riley’s paintings running until 7 June 2026, Concerto I 2024 has been generously donated by the artist and joins Tate’s holdings of her work spanning a remarkable six-decade working life.
Alex Farquharson, Director of Tate Britain said: “We are extremely grateful to Bridget Riley for her generosity in making such a significant gift to the nation. Riley’s work changed the landscape of abstract art and Concerto I demonstrates how she continues to expand her practice while upholding a commitment to exploring energy and sensation through colour and form. We’re delighted to be able to show the painting in Tate Britain’s free collection displays over the next year, and I have no doubt it will soon become one of the best-loved works in the gallery.”
Renowned internationally for her visually vibrant works, Bridget Riley’s particular approach to painting involves the skilful balancing of forms and colour to explore perceptions of space, balance and dynamism. Her recent works, Concerto 1 and Concerto 2 reflect the artist’s abiding love of French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painters and their engagement with colour. High in key, Concerto 1 is uplifting, while Concerto 2 explores hidden images.
Highlighting Riley’s dialogue with the sensory experience of sight, the new display includes Fall 1963, an important early abstract painting in Tate’s collection. The artist has described this painting as “a field of visual energy, which accumulates until it reaches maximum tension.” Using black and white curves, it evokes feelings of both elation and disturbance. Fall is being shown for the first time since receiving sustainable conservation treatment as part of GREENART, a groundbreaking new project researching ways to preserve cultural heritage using environmentally friendly materials.
Building on the long-standing relationship between Riley and Tate, this display is the artist’s fourth showing at the institution, having previously presented displays in 1973, 1994, and a large-scale retrospective survey in 2003. Fall was the first work by Riley to enter Tate’s collection in 1963 and has since been joined by nine paintings, 25 studies, and three works on paper by the artist. Concerto I is the first work by Riley created within this decade to be brought into Tate’s collection, expanding its representation of her practice.
Riley’s work is part of a series of regularly changing displays at Tate Britain to be staged since the gallery unveiled a full rehang in 2023. Collection works by Jacob Epstein, a key figure in the direct carving movement of the early 20th century, are currently installed in the Duveens Galleries at the heart of Tate Britain. Exploring the interplay between carving and modelling in Epstein’s work, monumental sculptures in stone are juxtaposed with bronze portrait busts. On 28 July, Pieter Casteels’s painting A Fable from Aesop: The Vain Jackdaw 1723 will be shown for the first time as part of a display looking at how artists have been inspired by birds. Several new artist interventions, first implemented with the rehang, will also appear throughout the collection. Found ceramics painted by Lubaina Himid will feature in the room exploring the rise of the urban metropolis in the era of Hogarth. Archive materials from Stuart Brisley’s time working on a project to record the experience of the inhabitants of Peterlee New Town and its surrounding villages will be included in the display exploring the place of abstract art in Britain’s post-war reconstruction.
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Listings information
Tate Britain, Millbank, SW1P 4RG
Open daily 10.00–18.00
Bridget Riley
Tate Britain, Room 24
21 July 2025 – 7 June 2026; Free
Curated by Nicoletta Lambertucci and Bridget Riley with Isabel Tovey
Jacob Epstein
Tate Britain, Duveen Galleries
14 July 2025 – 25 January 2026; Free
Curated by Dr Emma Chambers and Eliza Spindel
Birds
Tate Britain, Room 7
28 July 2025 – 14 June 2026; Free
Curated by Tim Batchelor
Lubaina Himid Intervention in Metropolis Collection Display
Tate Britain, Room 3
From 31 July – July 2027; Free
Curated by Kira Wainstein
Stuart Brisley Intervention in Construction Collection Display
Tate Britain, Room 17
Until July 2027; Free
Curated by Kira Wainstein
About Bridget Riley
Bridget Riley was born in 1931 in London, where she attended Goldsmiths College (1949-1952) and the Royal College of Art (1952-1955). She has previously exhibited with major institutions including the British Council, which toured an exhibition of her work to Hannover, Dusseldorf, Bern, Turin, Prague; the Hayward Gallery, London (1971 and 2019-2020); The Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2004–2005); Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (2008); The National Gallery, London (2010–2011); Art Institute of Chicago (2014–2015); Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, New Zealand (2017); Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art, Sakura, Japan (2018); and Scottish National Gallery (2019). Riley was awarded a CBE in 1974 and was appointed the Companion of Honour in 1991. She received an honorary Doctor of Letters (D.Litt) degree from Oxford University (1993) and from Cambridge University (1995) and was awarded the Praemium Imperiale, Tokyo (2003); the Kaiser Ring of the City of Goslar, Germany (2009); and the Rubens Prize of the City of Siegen, Germany (2012). Her work is included in museum and public collections worldwide, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate, UK; National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; The Art Institute of Chicago; The National Gallery of Australia; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Kunstmuseum, den Haag; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Nationalgalerie, Berlin.
About GREENART
GREENART is an international, multidisciplinary partnership of 30 collaborating institutions. Its main objective is to produce safe, appropriate and effective solutions for the remedial and preventive conservation of cultural heritage, based on environmentally friendly and low-impact materials made from renewable natural sources or recycled waste. It builds on the success of previous collaborative conservation projects at Tate, such as NANORESTART which facilitated the successful, low risk conservation treatment of Roy Lichtenstein’s Whaam! and Eve Hesse’s Addendum. GREENART makes use of Tate’s Conservation Science laboratories and equipment funded through two grants from the AHRC’s Capability for Collections Fund in 2021 and contributes to Tate’s ongoing work to reduce our carbon footprint and protect the environment. Tate’s contribution is led by Principal Investigator Dr. Bronwyn Ormsby (Principal Conservation Scientist) with support from team members: GREENART Conservation Science Researcher Dr. Morana Novak; Lead Painting Conservator Annette King (July 2025), Anna Cooper (Jan-July 2025); and Support Painting Conservator Katey Twitchett-Young throughout the project; in close collaboration with colleagues in Conservation, Curatorial and Tate Research. Tate is especially grateful to the Bridget Riley Art Foundation for its co-operation and its participation as an external advisor alongside Julia Nagle. For more information visit tate.org.uk/about-us/projects/greenart.
Bridget Riley’s painting, Fall, acquired by the Tate in 1963, was made using polyvinyl acetate. This type of modern paint is sensitive to cleaning and prone to significant change with time. Tate’s science and painting conservation teams have led cutting edge research into the use of GREENART’s solutions to remove unwanted soiling from the surface of Riley’s paintings. After extensively testing the new GREENART materials on representative mock-ups, conservators were able to effectively remove the haze of surface dirt to restore the vibrancy of the artist’s meticulously composed curved lines. This pioneering conservation treatment will inform best practice in the care of the artist’s work for future generations.
GREENART is coordinated by CSGI (Center for Colloid and Surface Science). For a full list of Project Partners visit: https://www.greenart-project.eu/partners/. GREENART is funded by the European Commission for Horizon Europe. As a UK participant, Tate is funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) under the UK government’s Horizon Europe funding guarantee.