Born in Guyana (then British Guiana) in 1934, Sir Frank Bowling OBE RA 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 recognised as an original force in London’s art scene with a style combining figurative, symbolic and abstract elements. After moving to New York in 1966, Bowling’s commitment to modernism meant he was increasingly focused on material, process and colour, so that by 1971 he had abandoned the use of figurative imagery. Bowling became a Royal Academician in 2005 and was awarded the OBE for services to Art in 2008 and a knighthood in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2020. In 2022, he was awarded the Wolfgang Hahn Prize which honours exceptional contemporary artists. His work is represented in fifty collections worldwide and has been exhibited widely, including the 2017-19 touring exhibition Mappa Mundi, the hugely successful retrospective at Tate Britain in 2019 and the major solo presentation Frank Bowling’s Americas at MFA Boston in 2022, touring to SF MOMA in May 2023.