Frank Bowling's Americas by Reto Thüring and Akili Tommasino with Debra Lennard, with contributions by Firelei Báez, Melvin Edwards, Julie Mehretu, Kobena Mercer, and Sarah Roberts
Hardcover SBN: 978-0-87846-887-4; 160 pages; 10 x 11 in.; 85 color illustrations
When the British Guiana–born artist Frank Bowling relocated from London to New York in 1966, he found an art scene in flux, with abstract painting exerting powerful force and vigorous debates unfolding around Black identity and artistic practice. Over the next decade he immersed himself in these currents, exhibiting and publishing widely, and organizing 5+1, an exhibition of five African American abstract artists plus himself. Bowling’s own work from these formative years explores the tension between representational images and fields of color, ultimately moving toward a fully abstract painterly language. This book reproduces more than thirty vibrant and protean works, accompanied by curatorial essays and statements by contemporary artists, inviting new understanding of the journey of an artist whose work has remained always in motion.
