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Arts Intel Report

Frank Bowling: Seeking the Sublime

Frank Bowling, Swan, 1964.

Until Jan 17, 2027
Trumpington St, Cambridge CB2 1RB, United Kingdom

Frank Bowling’s life began in British Guiana, where he was born in 1934, and took him to Manhattan’s Chelsea Hotel, where he lived alongside Rothko and Warhol in the 1960s. Drawn to Abstract Expressionism and Pop art, Bowling experimented with paint, layering his canvases with different washes and playing with impasto, gels, and metallic pigments. He is now renowned. For a time in the 1980s and 90s, Bowling was also a sculptor. As the critic Sam Cornish observes, “like Rodin before him, Bowling seeks vitality, matter brought to life.” When he returned to painting, objects and other materials found their way onto the canvas. This exhibition brings together Bowling’s work of a lifetime—his quest for the sublime. —Elena Clavarino

Photo courtesy the artist. Anna Arca. © Frank Bowling. All rights reserved, DACS 2025