Artists

FRANK BOWLING

Frank Bowling OBE RA (b. Guyana, 1936) moved to London in 1953 and began his artistic career began shortly after his arrival at the Royal College of Art (1959- 1962). He had his first one-person exhibition, Image in Revolt, at Grabowski Galleries in London, the year he graduated. However, Bowling decided to move to New York in 1966 and has since been splitting his time between London and Brooklyn studios.

Bowling's paintings have been widely exhibited internationally. Selected solo shows include Whitney Museum of American Art (1971) (New York), Serpentine Gallery (1986) (London) and UK touring retrospective, Frank Bowling: Bending to the Grid (2003). His work can be found in numerous public and private collections including Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), Museum of Modern Art (New York), Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), Royal Academy of Arts (London), Tate Gallery, (London), Victoria & Albert Museum (London) and the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York).

Having started out his career as a figurative painter, Bowling quite quickly turned to abstraction and by 1964 his pictures, which had always inclined towards a frontal geometric structure of space, became more geometrically complex and guided by principles of mathematics and symmetry. With this transition also came the disappearance of the social and political narrative that was present in Bowling's earlier work. By the early 70s colour took the lead role in his works with monochromes and color blocking becoming quite common for his pieces. 

In 1971 Bowling met Clement Greenberg, who not only became a regular visitor to the artist's studio, but also an important influence whose advice and encouragement helped any lingering doubts Bowling might have had about his commitment to modernism. By this time he also developed a very personal palette for his large, light-filled, lyrical colour abstractions that distinguished his work from that of earlier Color Field painters like Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski or Larry Poons.

In the early 80s the influence of geometry became visible not just in Bowling's paintings, but also in the way he worked with canvas. Bowling started using chunks of Styrofoam to create quasi-sculptural relief, a technique he is still using today. Bowling considers his output as that of a British artist. He continues to orchestrate the emotive potential of colours to communicate a visual experience of uniquely sensuous immediacy.