Skip to navigation | Skip to search
RA Magazine talks to Joe TIlson RA
Photograph by Eamonn McCabe.
RA Magazine talks to Chris Wilkinson RA
Photograph by Julian Anderson.
RA Magazine talks to Peter Cook RA
Photograph by Eamonn McCabe.
RA Magazine talks to Richard Wilson RA
Photograph by Julian Anderson.
Born: 29 February 1936, Guyana
Elected RA: 25 May 2005
Category of Membership: Painter
Frank Bowling moved from Guyana to London in 1950. He won a scholarship to study at the Royal College of Art in 1959 and graduated in 1962 with both a Silver Medal in Painting and a travel scholarship which took him to South America and the Caribbean. He was a contributing editor at Arts Magazine from 1969 to 1972 and held teaching positions at many institutions, including lectureships at the University of Reading, Massachusetts College of Art, Rutgers, and Columbia University. Bowling was appointed Officer of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2008 Birthday Honours.
Frank Bowling RA, 'Tent', acrylic on canvas. 84 x 127.
His early work was figurative and often described as expressionist, but from the mid 1960s his paintings became more geometric. He moved to New York in 1966 and started to concentrate on purely abstract pictorial issues relating to colour and composition. This transition from figuration to abstraction was accompanied by new working methods: his paintings became larger and he abandoned the easel, often pinning his canvases to his studio walls or floor.
Bowling was a leading Colour Field painter and colour dominated his work in the 1970s. The earthier hues of his figurative palette gave way to an exploration of high-key and lyrical colour. Spontaneity, chance, spilling, dripping and brushing became important working methods in the mid to late 1970s and Bowling began referring to his work as 'poured paintings'. His recent work utilises a full range of colour and is marked by the artist’s periods of often intense experimentation with surface texture. He maintains working studios in London and New York.
Read an interview with Frank Bowling in RA Magazine Spring 2006
VIDEO: Frank Bowling discusses 'Journeyings: Recent Works on Paper' (27 May–23 October 2011)
Frank Bowling RA, 'Journey along with Marcia Scott', acrylic on canvas, 310 x 193.
Recent solo exhibitions
2013 Tate Britain, London
Spanierman Modern, New York
2012 Hales Gallery, London
Chris Dyson Gallery, London
Spanierman Modern, New York
Tate Britain, London
2011 Tennant Gallery, Royal Academy of Arts, London
Rollo Contemporary Art, London
Hales Gallery, London
2010 Spanierman Modern, New York
Rollo Contemporary Art, London
2009 Clifford Chance, Canary Wharf, London
Rollo Contemporary Art, London
2008 Poussin Gallery, London
2007 Peg Alston Fine Arts, New York
The Arts Club, London
2006 ArtSway, Hampshire
Rollo Contemporary Art, London
G R N’Namdi Gallery, Chicago and New York
2005 Peg Alston Fine Arts, New York
G R N’Namdi Gallery, Chicago
1997 The Skylight Gallery at Restoration Plaza, Brooklyn
1971 Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
Contact details for further information
Email membershipoffice@royalacademy.org.uk
