Enrico Riley

Enrico Riley's artistic footprint extends across renowned institutions such as the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Hood Museum, and the Nasher Sculpture Center.

Biography of Enrico Riley

Enrico Riley was born in 1973 in Westbury, Connecticut, USA, and currently resides and works in Vermont and New Hampshire.

He holds an MFA in painting from Yale University and a BA in Visual Studies from Dartmouth College. Throughout his career, Riley has garnered prestigious accolades, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Rome Prize in Visual Arts, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Purchase Prize in Painting, and the esteemed George Frederick Jewitt Professorship in Art at Dartmouth College.

In his earlier works, Riley's canvases burst with bold hues — cadmium reds, vibrant greens, stark blacks, and blues. Many of these early pieces featured portraits set against noncontextualized backgrounds. However, his artistic trajectory has evolved, transitioning from somewhat surrealistic compositions to gestural depictions of specific scenes addressing societal issues.

Exploring themes of violence and hope within historical and contemporary African American cultural traditions, Riley employs formal techniques to challenge linear narratives. His paintings often feature fractured bodies, obscured figures, ambiguous environments, and cropped frames, inviting viewers to ponder complex narratives.

Moreover, Riley has ventured into new media, blending visual art with sound. Collaborating with Stanford University-based classical composer Jonathan Berger, Riley embarked on the project "I Can't Breathe," inspired by Eric Garner's final words as he succumbed to a police chokehold. Riley's drawings, informed by Berger's compositions, intertwine with the composer's music, creating a poignant dialogue between auditory and visual expressions.