Frank Bowling signed limited edition book

An elegant limited edition monograph celebrating the career of Frank Bowling, one of the most distinguished artists to emerge from postwar British art schools.

Now exclusively available in a slipcased cloth hardback, this beautiful edition features an exposed spine, sewn with pink and yellow coloured thread. Each book is housed in a tactile cloth slipcase, with a stunning reproduction of Bowling's Bartica Bressary, 1978-9 printed across the box.

Each copy has been numbered and hand-signed by the artist in a limited run of 200.

First published in 2019, this exhibition book was the first of its kind to cover the artist's entire oeuvre, spanning more than 60 years, and highlights Bowling's major contribution to abstract expressionism and the debates around colour-field painting.

Born in British Guiana in 1936, Frank Bowling arrived in Britain in his late teens, going on to study paiting at the the Royal College of Art in the same cohort as David Hockney and Derek Boshier. Since he started painting in the late 1950s, Bowling has pursued a relentless exploration of the properties and possibilities of paint, experimenting with stitching, staining, pouring and dripping. Often ambitious in scale, and usually described in terms of its colourful and luminous quality, and the energetic application or accrual of paint, Bowling's work combines figuration, abstract elements, popular and autobiographical references, and demonstrates his interest in social and political imagery.

This publication explores an extraordinary career spanning over 60 years. Beginning with his early figurative work created in the early 1960s, it traces the development of Bowling's practice right up to his most recent work, illustrating the artist's interest in surface textures; the tension between geometry and organic forms; and between expansive fields of colour and the accrual of thickly built impasto – as well as his use of unusual mediums, such as metallic pigments, fluorescent chalk and acrylic gels. Bowling's contribution to modern art and his wide-reaching influence are further illuminated by a combination of insightful art-historical texts and contemporary artistic voices. Featuring iconic series – such as the Map Paintings, the Poured Paintings and Great Thames – alongside rarely seen works, this book is a feast of colour and texture that highlights the quality and breadth of Bowling's long and distinguished career.

Edited by Elena Crippa, Curator of Contemporary Art: Exhibitions and Projects at The Courtauld. She was formerly Head of Exhibitions at the Whitechapel Gallery, London and Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary British Art at Tate Britain.

• Dimensions 27.5 x 23 cm
• Material Slip-cased clothbound hardback with Swiss binding and ribbon marker