6 min
Island Archives Entry C-10: Frank Bowling: Art Imitates Life Island Archives
-
- History
On today's episode of the IAP, we will peer onto the canvas of an individual who certainly made his mark in the pantheon of art history. Frank Bowling was born in British Guiana (now Guyana) in 1934, he arrived in London in 1953, graduating from the Royal College of Art with the silver medal for painting in 1962. Bowling went on to divide his time between the art scenes in London and New York, maintaining studios in both cities. This transatlantic orientation was to see his early engagement with expressive figuration and pop art shift to an immersion in abstraction which continues in his practice today. Visible in his work are the legacies of both the English landscape tradition and American abstraction from which Bowling honed a distinctive vocabulary, combining figurative, abstract and symbolic elements. For over six decades, Frank Bowling has relentlessly pursued a practice which boldly expands the possibilities and properties of paint. Ambitious in scale and scope, his dynamic engagement with the materiality of his chosen medium, and its evolution in the broad sweep of art history, has resulted in paintings of unparalleled originality, power and influence all which make him a certain stroke for the IA.
---
Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/island-archives/message
On today's episode of the IAP, we will peer onto the canvas of an individual who certainly made his mark in the pantheon of art history. Frank Bowling was born in British Guiana (now Guyana) in 1934, he arrived in London in 1953, graduating from the Royal College of Art with the silver medal for painting in 1962. Bowling went on to divide his time between the art scenes in London and New York, maintaining studios in both cities. This transatlantic orientation was to see his early engagement with expressive figuration and pop art shift to an immersion in abstraction which continues in his practice today. Visible in his work are the legacies of both the English landscape tradition and American abstraction from which Bowling honed a distinctive vocabulary, combining figurative, abstract and symbolic elements. For over six decades, Frank Bowling has relentlessly pursued a practice which boldly expands the possibilities and properties of paint. Ambitious in scale and scope, his dynamic engagement with the materiality of his chosen medium, and its evolution in the broad sweep of art history, has resulted in paintings of unparalleled originality, power and influence all which make him a certain stroke for the IA.
---
Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/island-archives/message
6 min