Bowling's transition to abstraction, seen against the backdrop of
1960s-'70s debates on abstract art and the Black Arts movement
"Modernism belonged to me also." So resolved the British Guiana-born
artist Frank Bowling in 1966, when he moved from his temporary home base
of London to New York City, keen to make his mark on modern painting.
This volume surveys for the first time the transformative years that
Bowling spent in the US from 1966 through 1975, a chapter of
extraordinary productivity and artistic growth that would greatly shape
his thinking and practice.
Bowling's relocation to New York brought him into contact with an art
scene in flux, with abstract painting on the rise and vigorous debates
unfolding around Black cultural identity and artistic practice. Bowling
participated in this scene in broad and deep ways, from his unique
vantage point as an emigre twice over: exhibiting widely, writing for
art magazines, engaging peers in dialogue and, in 1969, organizing
5+1, an exhibition of five leading African American abstract artists
plus himself. During these years, his own work explored the tension
between representational imagery and fields of color, ultimately moving
toward full abstraction.
Frank Bowling's Americas assembles more than 30 paintings--many rarely
seen--from this critical period, and places them in the context of both
Bowling's own artistic trajectory and the New York art scene at a time
of aesthetic and racial reckoning. Offering magnificent reproductions of
these vibrant, multifaceted works, accompanied by curatorial essays and
statements by contemporary artists, this book invites new understanding
of an artist whose work has remained always in motion.
Born in British Guiana in 1934, Frank Bowling arrived in London in
1953, graduating from the Royal College of Art in 1962. By the early
1960s, he was recognized as an original force in London's art scene.
After moving to New York in 1966, Bowling shifted away from figurative
imagery. He returned to London in 1975 but continued to spend
significant periods in New York. Bowling was awarded a knighthood in
2020. He is the subject of a BBC documentary, Frank Bowling's Abstract
World.
