Frank Bowling’s Americas
Frank Bowling, Middle Passage (detail), 1970. Synthetic polymer paint, silkscreen ink, spray paint, wax crayon, and graphite on canvas. Menil Collection, Houston. Photograph by Adam Neese. © Frank Bowling. All rights reserved, DACS, London & ARS, New York 2022.
Frank Bowling, Rupununi (detail), 1971. Acrylic on canvas. © Frank Bowling. All rights reserved, DACS, London & ARS, New York 2022.
Frank Bowling, Middle Passage (detail), 1970. Synthetic polymer paint, silkscreen ink, spray paint, wax crayon, and graphite on canvas. Menil Collection, Houston. Photograph by Adam Neese. © Frank Bowling. All rights reserved, DACS, London & ARS, New York 2022.
Frank Bowling, Rupununi (detail), 1971. Acrylic on canvas. © Frank Bowling. All rights reserved, DACS, London & ARS, New York 2022.
“Modernism belonged to me also.” So resolved British Guiana–born artist Frank Bowling in 1966, when he moved from London to New York City, impelled by ambition to make his mark on modern painting. “Frank Bowling’s Americas” is the first exhibition dedicated to the transformative years the artist spent in the US, and the first major survey of his work by an American institution in more than four decades.
Bowling’s primary residence was New York from 1966 to 1975. In that time he came into contact with a vibrant and tumultuous art scene, with abstract painting on an explosive rise, heated debates unfolding around Black cultural identity and artistic practice, and Stokely Carmichael’s slogan “Black Power” emanating from the South. Over the course of the decade, Bowling wrote copiously for art magazines, held several teaching positions (including at Massachusetts College of Art), exhibited widely (including a solo show at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1971), and in 1969 curated “5+1,” an exhibition of five leading African American abstract artists (Melvin Edwards, Daniel LaRue Johnson, Al Loving, Jack Whitten and William T. Williams) plus Bowling himself at Stony Brook University, New York. His experiences in the US catalyzed profound shifts in his painting, explored here through more than 30 works.
The exhibition brings together a range of Bowling’s powerful works in the country of their making—Pop-inflected paintings from the early 1960s; monumental, color-soaked canvases that evoke oceanic expanses; and little-seen examples of the artist’s technically pioneering paintings rooted in abstraction. Providing for the first time a nuanced encounter with this pivotal chapter of Bowling’s career, “Frank Bowling’s Americas” offers an essential contribution to a more cross-cultural and global understanding of modern art.
The exhibition will be on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) from May 13 to September 10, 2023.
- Henry and Lois Foster Gallery (Gallery 158)
- Charlotte F. and Irving W. Rabb Gallery (Gallery 155)
Image Gallery
Acrylic on canvas. Lent by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, gift of Maddy and Larry Mohr, 2011. © Frank Bowling. All rights reserved, DACS/Artimage, London & ARS, New York 2022.
Frank Bowling, Night Journey, 1969–70
In this map painting with a distinctive, brooding palette, South America and Africa appear in geographic relation to one another while continents of the northern hemisphere are out of sight. A bolt of yellow fills the gap between the two visible land masses. Nearly splitting the canvas, its forceful downward thrust can be understood as marking the Middle Passage, the forced sea voyage endured by enslaved peoples taken from West Africa to the Americas, and the journey of the painting’s title.
Frank Bowling, Penumbra, 1970
Acrylic and spray paint on canvas. Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco. Foundation purchase, Phyllis C. Wattis Fund for Major Accessions. Image: © Hales Gallery. © Frank Bowling. All rights reserved, DACS/Artimage, London & ARS, New York 2022.
Frank Bowling, Looking West Again, 2020
Acrylic on canvas. Lent by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Museum Acquisitions and Florence and Herbert Irving Acquisitions Funds, Gina and Stuart Peterson and The Ford Foundation Gifts, and Rogers Fund, 2022. Image: Damian Griffiths. © Frank Bowling. All rights reserved, DACS/Artimage, London & ARS, New York 2022.
Frank Bowling, Who’s Afraid of Barney Newman, 1968
Acrylic on canvas. Tate: Presented by Rachel Scott 2006. © Frank Bowling. All rights reserved, DACS/Artimage, London & ARS, New York 2022.
Frank Bowling, Doughlah G.E.P., 1968–71
Acrylic on canvas. Courtesy of the artist. Image © Charlie Littlewood. © Frank Bowling. All rights reserved, DACS/Artimage, London & ARS, New York 2022.
Frank Bowling, Middle Passage, 1970
Synthetic polymer paint, silkscreen ink, spray paint, wax crayon, and graphite on canvas. Menil Collection, Houston. Image by Adam Neese. © Frank Bowling. All rights reserved, DACS, London & ARS, New York 2022.
Frank Bowling, Mel Edwards Decides, 1969
Acrylic and spray paint on canvas. Private Collection, courtesy of Adam Green Art Advisory. Image: Green Family Art Foundation. © Frank Bowling. All rights reserved, DACS, London & ARS, New York 2022.
Frank Bowling, Palimpsest I - Mothers House DarkRedGreen, 1966
Acrylic and silkscreened ink on canvas. Courtesy the artist. Image © Charlie Littlewood. © Frank Bowling. All rights reserved, DACS/Artimage, London & ARS, New York 2022.
Frank Bowling, Woosh, 1974
Acrylic on canvas. Private Collection, USA. Image by Jaime Alvarez. Reproduced with permission. © Frank Bowling. All rights reserved, DACS, London & ARS, New York 2022.
Frank Bowling, Suncrush, 1976
Acrylic on canvas. Sophie M. Friedman Fund. Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. © Frank Bowling. All rights reserved, DACS, London & ARS, New York 2022.
Frank Bowling, Mother’s House and Night Storm, 1967
Acrylic on canvas. Sheldon Inwentash and Lynn Factor, Toronto. Photo by JSP Art Photography. Image courtesy Hales Gallery. © Frank Bowling. All rights reserved, DACS, London & ARS, New York 2022.
Frank Bowling, Two Blues, The Terminal Illness, 1973
Acrylic on canvas. Lent by Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence. Nancy Sayles Day Collection of Modern Latin American Art. Photograph courtesy of RISD Museum of Art. © Frank Bowling. All rights reserved, DACS, London & ARS, New York 2022.
Sponsors
Additional generous support from the Henry and Lois Foster Fund for Contemporary Exhibitions. Supported by the Robert and Jane Burke Fund for Exhibitions, the Barbara Jane Anderson Fund, The Museum Council Special Exhibition Fund and The Amy and Jonathan Poorvu Fund for the Exhibition of Contemporary Art and Sculpture.