Over the past decade, Frank Bowling
has enjoyed belated attention and celebration, including a major Tate
Britain retrospective in 2019. This comprehensive monograph, published
in 2011, is now available in an updated and expanded edition.
Born
in British Guiana in 1934, Bowling arrived in England in his late
teens, going on to study at the Royal College of Art alongside David
Hockney and Derek Boshier. By the early 1960s he was recognised as an
original force in the vibrant London art scene, with a style that
brilliantly combined figurative, symbolic and abstract elements.
Dividing
his time between New York and London since the late 1960s, he has
developed a unique and virtuosic abstract style that combines aspects of
American painterly abstraction with a treatment of light and space that
consciously recollects the great English landscape painters
Gainsborough, Turner and Constable. In a compelling text the art writer,
critic and curator Mel Gooding hails Bowling as one of the finest
British artists of his generation.