Signed Abstract Black and White Op Art Drawing, Pen and Ink on Paper. From 1970. Signed below frame bottom right. 

Overall: 18 3/8 x 24 1/2 in. 

Sight: 17 1/2 x 23 1/2 in. 

#7931 . 

Op art is a perceptual experience related to how vision functions. It is a dynamic visual art that stems from a discordant figure-ground relationship that puts the foreground and background in a tense and contradictory juxtaposition between the two planes. Artists create op art in two primary ways. The first, best known method, is to create effects through pattern and line. Often these paintings are black and white, or shades of gray (grisaille), as in Bridget Riley’s early paintings such as Current (1964) on the cover of The Responsive Eye catalog. Another reaction that occurs is that the lines create after-images of certain colors due to how the retina receives and processes light. As Goethe demonstrates in his treatise “Theory of Colours,” at the edge where light and dark meet, color arises because lightness and darkness are the two central properties in the creation of color. The form shares many similarities with other abstract movements, and was popularized by artists like M.C. Escher and Yacov Agam, and has become a useful tool for early artists to explore concepts of dimension, balance, and perception with a small number of colors and a confined space.