Frank Bowling

Frank Bowling, one of the most significant British artists of his generation, has spent over six decades expanding the boundaries of painting with originality and ambition. Born in British Guiana (now Guyana) in 1934, he moved to London in 1953, graduating from the Royal College of Art in 1962. Early in his career, Bowling's painting blended expressionistic figuration and pop art, incorporating autobiographical and socio-political elements. Later, his work transitioned to abstraction, shaped by influences from both English landscape traditions and American abstraction.

 

In 1966, Bowling relocated to New York, engaging with contemporaries like Jasper Johns and curating the pivotal exhibition "5+1" in 1969, which highlighted African American abstract artists and his own work. His groundbreaking "Map Paintings" featuring stenciled landmasses, debuted at the Whitney Museum in 1971. By the mid-1970s, Bowling pioneered "Poured Paintings" a technique involving controlled paint pours, creating strikingly textured and abstract compositions.

 

During the 1980s, Bowling's art evolved into quasi-sculptural forms, embedding objects in thickly layered canvases inspired by landscapes and geological formations. His "Great Thames" series of the late 1980s demonstrated his mastery of light, echoing the works of Turner and Constable. In recent years, Bowling has continued to innovate with materials like metallic pigments, stitched canvasesand multilayered washes, pushing the possibilities of abstraction.

 

Bowling's career gained renewed recognition with his "Map Paintings" reintroduced at the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003. He became a Royal Academician in 2005, was awarded an OBE in 2008 and was knighted in 2020. Recent exhibitions, including a Tate Britain retrospective in 2019 and "Frank Bowling: Americas" in 2022–2023, have further solidified his legacy as a pioneer in modern art. Bowling remains active, working daily in his South London studio.