FORT WORTH: AUBREY WILLIAMS & FRANK BOWLING

Feeling Color: Aubrey Williams and Frank Bowling

March 15 - July 27, 2025

MODERN ART MUSEUM OF FORT WORTH
3200 Darnell Street
Fort Worth, Texas

From themodern.org: 

Feeling Color: Aubrey Williams and Frank Bowling, organized by the Modern and Curator María Elena Ortiz, celebrates the work of these two artists and their contributions to the story of abstract painting in the late twentieth century. Williams (1926–90) and Bowling (b. 1934) migrated from British Guiana (now Guyana) in South America to European and American cities in the 1950s, escaping social upheavals in their native country. Expanding on the international legacies of abstraction that are among the Modern’s central concerns, these artists’ works show that, even in moments of despair, art creates a space for refuge, reckoning, and imagination. This exhibition puts both artists in conversation, illustrating Williams’s powerful commitment to investigating abstract forms and Bowling’s painterly and experimental approach. Williams was Bowling’s elder, and together their works provide an opportunity to reflect on the power of art and abstraction in the twentieth century.

Feeling Color presents Bowling’s influential Map series, 1967–71, and his later poured paintings, which evidence sociopolitical concerns and explore the materiality of paint. Williams’s works include examples from two painting series, Shostakovich, 1969–81, and The Olmec-Maya and Now, 1981–85, alongside other paintings and drawings. These works reflect the artists’ histories by combining modernist abstraction with imagery derived from African diasporic dwellings and the Indigenous cultures of South America, each pointing to the complexity of their postcolonial heritage. These are works that embrace color, movement, experimentation, and abstraction to convey human emotion.

For more information, click here.

NEW YORK: Frank Bowling, O.B.E., RA

Frank Bowling, O.B.E., RA, Head, 2013. © 2014 Frank Bowling, O.B.E., RA. Image via  spaniermanmodern.com.

At Eighty

April 24 – May 28, 2014

SPANIERMAN MODERN

625 West 55^th Street, 5^th Floor

New York, NY

From spaniermanmodern.com:

Spanierman Modern is pleased to announce an exhibition and sale of abstract canvases by Frank Bowling, O.B.E., RA, an artist whose commitment to the primacy of the creative act of painting resonates throughout all of his art. His paintings, in which he blends together aspects of Abstract Expressionism, Process Art, Color Field Painting, and the craftsmanship tradition (to which his mother contributed through her work as a seamstress), have long been recognized for their optical and surface complexities.  He continues to break new ground in the works in this exhibition, taking risks and exercising compromise and authoritative control in the exploration of new avenues.  The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue with an essay by Jim Hunter, Professor Emeritus of Painting, The Arts University, Bournemouth, England. 

Bowling, who currently divides his time between London and New York, was born in British Guyana.  In the 1960s, he was at the forefront of a new generation of British artists. Among his classmates at the Royal College of Art, London, were David Hockney, R. B. Kitaj, Allen Jones, and Derek Boshier.  On graduating in 1962 Bowling won a silver medal to Hockney’s gold, but departing stylistically from his contemporaries (who moved in the direction of Pop Art), Bowling found a basis for his work in the legacy of Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, while drawing on the influence of Francis Bacon. Bowling’s art has received high honors throughout his career.  He was the first black artist to be elected to the Royal Academy, London, and he was honored in 2008 with the Order of the British Empire (O.B.E.) for his service to art.  In 2011, a monograph on Bowling by Mel Gooding was published, and his work was featured in a solo show at the Royal Academy. In 2012, he was included in an important group exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, and featured in a solo display at the Tate Britain, London.  

Bowling’s method consists of working on unstretched canvas, which he often cuts or reassembles, stapling and gluing parts together. At times, he folds and rolls up a work to be finished at a later time in a different place, encompassing the theme of temporality.  Receptive to new methods, he has developed many ways of pouring paint, including the use of a tilting board platform controlled by pegs, which enable him to determine the velocity of the paint’s downward movement.  This exhibition includes works in which Bowling has deployed a number of new compositional and technical means.  In Shadow Under and Yellow L and Rowers, he used a horizontal alignment of poured colors, producing a suggestion of propulsion through space and time. Strong landscape references are present in El Dorado, providing a reminder that Bowling has always been conscious of the Romantic painters and shared their ambition to create images of the sublime.  The blue area at the bottom of the picture confounds our expectations, with its sense of aerial space. In some paintings such as Blue Top and About Yellow, by turning his poured paint to read right to left, Bowling has established a more frontal formation, in which bands of more naturalistic colorings are held in place by light, weightless space.

While each work is an individualistic experience, when seen together Bowling’s paintings seem part of the “artist’s laboratory” They carry on a dialogue in which their differences answer and support each other, affording a rich array of perceptual engagements. 

Exhibit Link

FÊTE: Frank Bowling to receive Aljira Center’s First Lifetime Achievement Award on May 23

Dawoud Bey's 1990 portrait of Frank Bowling (Silver Gelatin Print, 11 x 14 inches) is available for bids at The Aljira Fine Art Auction 2013 in Newark, NJ  on May 23. Click here for detailed item information.

Aljira, a Center for Contemporary Art celebrates 30th Anniversary with fine art auction and tribute to renowned artist

On May 23, 2013 Aljira, a Center for Contemporary Art will proudly present internationally renowned artist, Frank Bowling and his artist partner Rachel Scott with the center’s first Timehri Lifetime Achievement Award. In honor of Aljira’s 30^th Anniversary Bowling has created Ahaahead!, a limited edition etching and acquatint print.

Aljira is also proud to honor Meme Omogbai, COO of the Newark Museum and Chair of the Board of the American Alliance of Museums, and Lyneir Richardson, CEO of Newark’s Brick City Development Corporation. Honorary Co-Chairs of The Aljira Fine Art Auction are The Honorable Cory A. Booker, Barbara Bell Coleman and Nina Mitchell Wells.

Aljira, a Center for Contemporary Art’s annual, festive fine art auction features original works of art by leading established and emerging artists of our time and attracts a diverse audience from throughout New Jersey and New York in support of the center’s programs.

INFORMATION:

The Aljira Fine Art Auction 2013

Thursday, May 23, 2013

Party and Silent Auction: 5:30pm

Live Auction Begins:  7:00pm - 9:00pm

VENUE:

Aljira, a Center for Contemporary Art

591 Broad Street

Newark, NJ

Purchase tickets here. 

View auction works here. 

Celebrating Long-time Aljira Friend and Major Benefactor: Frank Bowling

GENESIS: Frank Bowling OBE RA / February 29, 1936

Frank Bowling, Self-Portrait as an Egyptian Queen, Acrylic on Canvas, 2003.

"It is a form of cultural myopia, malignant in its approach to Black art; for Black art, like any art, is art. The difference is that it is done by a special kind of people."

--Frank Bowling OBE RA

YouTube: Excerpt from Frank Bowling's Life and Work

Frank Bowling OBE