Frank Bowling: Traingone Spritmuseum, Stockholm

British artist, Frank Bowling OBE is widely considered to be one of the most distinguished artists to emerge from post-war British art schools. Traingone features a series of Bowling’s large-scale abstract paintings, informed by the principles of mathematics and symmetry and made between the 1970s and 1990s.

Bowling began his career as a figurative painter but moved into abstraction in the 1970s, and distinguished himself from other Colour Field painters with his light-filled, lyrical palette. In the early 1980s, the influence of geometry became visible through Bowling’s unique experimentation with plastic foam packaging material found in the studio, which he cut into strips with pinking shears to create sculptural relief.

Shown in a unique, custom-designed gallery space built for Spritmuseum’s new location on the island of Djurgården, Traingone explores this middle period of Bowling’s practise in work including the painting Traingone, 1996 for which the title of the exhibition takes its name. This is displayed to illustrate how Bowling’s titles often reference life events or broader intellectual issues based on memories and places, people and friends; they may also be riddles or puns, adding humouristic and poetic references to the Guyanese landscape and two of his greatest passions: cricket and jazz.

In fact, the inspirations for Frank Bowling’s abstractions are many: they appear as a play with colour, shape and light with a strong connection to modern expression and the art scenes of London and New York.

An illustrated catalogue written by curator Zoe Whitley and writer, critic and curator Mel Gooding, with an introduction by Spritmuseum curator Mia Sundberg, will accompany the exhibition.

Frank Bowling: Traingone Spritmuseum, Djurgårdsvägen 38, 115 21, Stockholm 23 October – 6 April

Credit:
1. Frank Bowling, Traingone (Mahaicony Abary), (1996) Photograph reproduced with the permission of the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, Coventry

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