SASSENHEIM.- Bridget Riley (GB, 1931) is the first female artist in the history of the Sikkens Prize to receive the award. This grand old lady of British art will receive this prestigious colour prize for the way in which she has enriched her work with colour. The purity, subtlety and precision of her use of colour have led to a sensational oeuvre from which a new generation of artists is drawing inspiration. At the same time she has demonstrated her ability to appeal to a broad public with her abstract work.

The prize will be presented in the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague on 28 October 2012. The laudation will be delivered by John Elderfield, emeritus curator at large of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. During the presentation of the award, the neuroscientist Dick Swaab will deliver the Mondrian Lecture 2012. The event will also mark the opening of an exhibition of work by Bridget Riley in the Gemeentemuseum, including as a highlight a mural almost 20 metres long and 4 metres high.

Sikkens Prize 2012: Bridget Riley
Bridget Riley is one of the most prominent artists of today. She studied at Goldsmith College London (1949-1952) and the Royal College of Art (1952-1955). She already made a name for herself in the 1960s with her black and white paintings that investigated the dynamic effects of optical phenomena. Riley began to experiment with colour in 1967, and since then she has been investigating perception through colour and form. Her work has been shown in international solo and group exhibitions since the early 1960s, from The Responsive Eye in the MoMA in 1965 to the solo exhibition New Paintings and Related Work in the National Gallery in 2011. Bridget Riley has received numerous distinctions and prizes, including the international prize for painting at the 1968 Venice Biennale, the Kaiserring of the city of Goslar in 2009, and recently the 12th Rubens Prize from the city of Siegen.

Mondrian Lecture 2012: Dick Swaab
Dick Swaab will deliver the Mondrian Lecture 2012. This lecture is a contribution to the debate on the cultural significance of colour. The doctor and emeritus professor of neurobiology at the University of Amsterdam (AMC) Dick Swaab was director of the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience from 1978 to 2005 and founder and director of the Netherlands Brain Bank until 2005. He wrote the monograph The Human Hypothalamus in Handbook of Clinical Neurology and the bestseller Wij zijn ons brein. Van baarmoeder tot Alzheimer [We are our brains. From the womb to Alzheimer’s] (Contact, 2010) on how the brain works. The book has been translated into German, Italian, Chinese and other languages.

Sikkens Foundation
The Sikkens Prize is awarded every two years by the Sikkens Foundation, an independent cultural foundation whose objective is to promote social, cultural and scientific developments in society in which colour plays a specific role. The first Sikkens Prize was awarded to Gerrit Rietveld in 1960. Other award winners have included Le Corbusier, the hippies, Donald Judd and the HEMA retail chain for their pioneering work in the field of the application of colour. The first Mondrian Lecture was delivered in 1979. Among those who have given it are Walter Lewin, Umberto Eco, Simon Schama, Donald Judd, Rem Koolhaas, Artangel and Charles Jencks.