Frank Bowling, #4 to the Lighthouse, 2021
Hauser & Wirth West Hollywood presents Frank Bowling Landscape from May 26 – August 5, 2023. One of the foremost British artists of his generation, Sir Frank Bowling has spent more than six decades relentlessly challenging the limits of the medium of painting and expanded its possibilities, attracting acclaim for his contributions to abstraction. ‘Landscape,’ the artist’s first solo exhibition at Hauser & Wirth West Hollywood, presents 14 recent ebullient paintings that engage the rich art historical tradition of landscape painting – and propel it forward into the present moment.
Over the course of 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 and power. Bowling has been hailed as one of the foremost British artists of his generation. Born in Guyana in 1934, he arrived in London in 1953, graduating from the Royal College of Art with the silver medal for painting in 1962. By the early 1960s, he was recognized as an assured force in London’s art scene. During this period, his highly individual language of painting, which emerged from expressionistic figuration and pop art, encompassed autobiographical elements and the artist’s socio-political concerns.
Today Bowling’s mastery of the painted medium and explorations of light, color, and geometry incorporate the use of ammonia and multilayered washes. His restless reinvention of the painted plane endures in his current bodies of work which continue to break new ground through his use of thick impasto textures, acrylic gels, collage, stitched canvas and metallic and pearlescent pigments. At the age of 86, Bowling works every day in his South London studio, accompanied by his wife, Rachel, other family members and friends, forever driven by his fascination with exploring the vast and radiant possibilities of paint.
To accompany the exhibition, Hauser & Wirth Publishers will produce an extensively illustrated catalogue featuring an essay by Dorothy Price, Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art and Critical Race Art History at The Courtauld Institute of Art in London.
‘Landscape’ at Hauser & Wirth West Hollywood coincides with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) exhibition ‘Frank Bowling: The New York Years 1966-1975,’ the first major US presentation of the artist’s work in more than four decades. Traveling from the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the exhibition will be on view May 20–September 10, 2023, and will feature eleven additional artworks, including an expanded group of paintings made between 2018 and 2022.
