Sir Frank Bowling (British born, 1936), Acrylic on collaged canvas, 2018
Bowling’s endless desire to reinvent and expand upon the medium of painting, to ‘make it new’ makes him a leading pioneer of abstraction. Born in Guyana in 1934, Bowling has lived and worked between London and New York since the 1950s, though he only came to international prominence in his 70s. His works were exhibited in a major retrospective at Tate Britain, a show spanning 60 years of his artistic production – and one that is long overdue. In 2020, Bowling was awarded a knighthood in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list for his services to Art. Hailed as one of the finest British artists of his generation, the abstract expressionist artist said he was ‘extremely proud’ to be made a Knight at the age of 86.
Frank Bowling (photo credit Mathilde Agius)
Bowling was included in the traveling survey, “Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power 1963–1983,” which first opened at Tate Modern in London in 2017. Esteemed and influential, poet, curator, writer, and educator, Okwui Enwezor organized a survey of Bowling’s work for the Haus der Kunst in Munich that same year followed by the Tate museum’s survey in 2019. Bowling is currently represented by mega gallery, Hauser & Wirth.