(1936 - )
Frank Bowling was born in Bartica, British Guyana in 1936. It was in London in 1953 that Bowling, as a teenager doing his national service, felt he first discovered art. He studied initially at Regent Street Polytechnic, and then went on to the Royal College of Art, graduating in 1962. From the 1960s he divided his time between London and New York, maintaining a studio in each city. Since 2000 Bowling has had many solo exhibitions in the United States, principally in New York, Detroit and Chicago. In 2005 he was the first Black artist to be recognised by the Royal Academy of Arts (RA) in London; and his solo exhibition in 2006 at Rollo Contemporary Art was a celebration of his election to the RA. A major critically-acclaimed retrospective of Bowling's work was held at Tate Britain, London, in 2019. His work is represented in many major public collections including the Metropolitan Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Tate, London.
