30. Late Morning

The works in the Late Morning series represent Riley’s earliest color paintings. In each one, red stripes repeat across the canvas, paired with hues ranging from blue to green. For this painting, Riley chose, for the first time, a large-scale, horizontal format, which she considered essential to release the energy of the colors. Late Morning was exhibited alongside Chant 2 and Cataract 3 (cats. 31, 32) at the Venice Biennale in 1968, earning Riley the international painting prize.