Frank Bowling: Collage

Frank Bowling: Collage
22nd March, 2025 – 26th May, 2025
Hauser & Wirth Paris
26 bis rue François 1er
​75008 Paris

‘Frank Bowling. Collage,’ the artist’s first solo exhibition in France, explores collage as a conceptual tool and technique for Bowling’s practice and thinking. The exhibition features works from the early 2000s up until the present day, where at the age of 90 he still paints on a daily basis.

The starting point for the show is reflected in four new large-scale paintings on display in the ground floor gallery, which are comprised of multiple canvas panels. These monumental works—including the 4.4 meter-tall ‘Skid’ (2023)—are a renewal of Bowling’s use of collaged canvas and marouflage, which has long formed an important part of his practice. The exhibition is complemented by an academic program.

Bowling’s attraction to collage was partly influenced by Henri Matisse’s cut-outs, which he first encountered in the late 1950s and again at the 1992 MoMA retrospective in New York. For an article in the 1999 Winter issue of ‘Modern Painters,’ Bowling was asked to reflect on his career and select a work of art that most shaped or changed his own vision and chose ‘The Snail’ (1953) by Matisse. Paying homage to this work, Bowling has made several collaged pieces directly referencing the spiral pattern, including ‘Back to Snail’ (2000).

Bowling’s first conceptual engagement with collage can be found in his early work in the ‘60s. Stating his material ambitions he has said, ‘I wanted to marry up all these disparate bits like color, mannerism, where you paint, this fandango of all these styles and make up a sort of strong work that has aspects of painting and sculpture and architecture […] they can hang together like something new.’

The works selected for this exhibition also evidence the development in Bowling’s incorporation of found objects. Since the 1980s, diverse materials have found their way into his paintings, from children’s toys to medical equipment. In ‘Skid,’ for example, there are pieces cut from a medical plastic bag, a protruding medical tube, loose canvas string and strips of canvas.

These everyday objects provide the viewer with an entry point and most have some personal meaning to Bowling, acting as a form of autobiography. These items are embedded into the picture plane along with the translucent fluidity of acrylic gel and paint, breaking and erupting from the surface. ‘I’m moved to chuck in detritus, and watch it swim and settle,’ Bowling once said, ‘it makes me feel I can get to a whole vision of what I’ve passed through in life.’

About Frank Bowling

Sir Frank Bowling OBE RA has been hailed as one of the greatest living painters. Born in Guyana in 1934, Bowling arrived in London in 1953, graduating from the Royal College of Art with the silver medal for painting in 1962. By the early 1960s, he was recognized as an original force in London’s art scene, blending figurative, symbolic, and abstract elements into his work.

After moving to New York in 1966, Bowling’s commitment to modernism deepened, shifting his focus toward material, process, and color. By 1971, he had fully embraced abstraction, leaving figurative imagery behind. His iconic ‘Map Paintings’ (1967-71)—featuring the stenciled landmasses of South America, Africa, and Australia—mark this transition. In 1971, he exhibited six of these large-scale works in a solo show at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

From 1973 to 1978, Bowling experimented with chance and ‘controlled accidents,’ pouring paint from a height of two meters to create his visually arresting ‘Poured Paintings.’

Bowling’s contributions to art have been widely recognized. He became a Royal Academician in 2005, received the OBE for Services to Art in 2008, and was knighted in 2020 as part of the Queen’s birthday honors. His work is held in around 60 collections worldwide and has been featured in numerous exhibitions, including:

• ‘Mappa Mundi’ (2017–2019) – A major touring exhibition
• Tate Britain Retrospective (2019) – Hugely successful solo show
• ‘Frank Bowling: Americas’ (2022–2023) – Toured from MFA Boston to SFMOMA

In 2022, Bowling was awarded the Wolfgang Hahn Prize, an honor recognizing exceptional contemporary artists.

Today, Bowling continues to push the boundaries of painting. His explorations of light, color, and geometry involve ammonia washes, thick impasto textures, acrylic gels, collage, stitched canvas, and metallic pigments. Working daily in his South London studio, he remains driven by an unrelenting fascination with the endless possibilities of paint.

Frank Bowling: Collage opens on the 22nd of March, 2025 until the 26th of May, 2025 at Hauser & Wirth Paris

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