'Radiant Abstraction' by Richard Irving Bowman, 1962, Kinetogenics, Psychedelic, Art Istitute of Chicago, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Description

Signed lower left, 'R. Bowman' for Richard Irving Bowman (American, 1918-2001), titled, 'Kg. 55' (Kinetogenics 55) and dated February 1962. … more Signed lower left, 'R. Bowman' for Richard Irving Bowman (American, 1918-2001), titled, 'Kg. 55' (Kinetogenics 55) and dated February 1962. Additionally titled, on stretcher bar verso, 'Kg 55'.

Accompanied by a first edition copy of 'Richard Bowman: Radiant Abstractions', by Patricia Watts and Stefanie De Winter, published 2018.

Richard Bowman received a scholarship to study at the Art Institute of Chicago, from which he received his Bachelor's degree in 1942. He subsequently attended the University of Iowa, receiving his Master's degree in 1945. Over the course of a long and distinguished career, Bowman exhibited internationally with success and was the recipient of numerous gold medals, prizes and juried awards.

With the Kinetogenics Series, which he began in 1956, Bowman explored the intersection of color and light using contemporary advances in light theory and fluorescence technology. "For this series, he started using fluorescent enamel alkyd paint, which, Bowman stated, emitted an actual, measurable energy from the canvas. He combines his early concept of elemental radiants with the gestures of a mature Abstract Expressionist. Incorporating bold fluorescent strokes of orange, yellow and blue, which are activated by the ultraviolet in daylight, Bowman's new abstractions represented a synthesis of the physical and sensorial transmissions of energy. The combination of the artist's interests in nuclear physics, atoms, and dynamism with these vibrant colors reflected Bowman's increasing confidence as an unconventional artist working in an unconventional medium." (Richard Bowman: Radiant Abstractions, p. 13)

"The 'kinetogenic' series which Bowman has been painting recently, are whorls of pure energy in colors from the violet edges of the spectrum in vibrant relationship to the vivid primaries of the center. These paintings have much less sense of place or landscape than Bowman paintings we have seen before. The “Environs” group accompanying the energy pictures in this exhibition, are, on the other hand, specific about place: are of flower beds and branches of trees, painted with the same brilliant color intensity. This use of vibrant colors gives an all-over electric, textural effect in contrast to the after-image jump which obtains when the vibrants are painted flat and geometric. This textural mosaic effect is close to the vision of heat and passionate rhythm which was central to pre-Columbian art, and is still present in the Mexican arts and crafts, which were one of Bowman’s formative sources. It is interesting to note that several of the painters who have influenced many others to experiment with vibrancy and glow in color, found their own impetus in this direction while painting in Mexico. Bowman was one of the painters who was working with fluorescents when the general tendency was to paint with muck. One feels that using color thus leads the artist, as it did his pre-Columbian esthetic ancestors, in the direction where the ecstatic becomes mystic." (courtesy of Artforum, April 1964)

Thomas Albright also writes of the artist, "Visiting Mexico on a traveling fellowship in the early 1940s, [Bowman] met Gordon Onslow-Ford, with whom he renewed a friendship after moving to San Mateo County in the early 1950s. His paintings, although gestural and abstract, were close in spirit to those of the Dynaton artists than to the mainstream of Abstract Expressionism. They constituted an intensely lyrical and metaphorical abstract Impressionism inspired by Bonnard and an intimacy with the natural environment. Bowman was also influenced by jazz improvisation and the jazz poetry of Kenneth Patchen, a close friend" (p. 263)

Solo Exhibitions:
Pinacotecha Gallery (Rose Fried Gallery), NY, 1945
Milwaukee Art Institute, Milwaukee, WI, 1946
Swetzoff Gallery, Boston, MA, 1949
Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, 1950, 1956
Rose Rabow Gallery, 1959–1977
San Francisco Museum of Art, CA, 1961, 1970
Roswell Museum of Art, NM, 1972
Harcourts Gallery, 1986
Steven Wolf Fine Arts, 2001
The Landing Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, 2019

Two Person Exhibitions:
Art Institute of Chicago (with Russsel Woeltz), 1945
University of Illinois (with Joan Mitchell), 1947
San Francisco Museum of Art (with Gordon Onslow-Ford), 1959

Selected Group Exhibitions:
Art Institute of Chicago, 1945
Toronto Gallery of Art, 1953
São Paulo Biennial, 1953
Montreal Museum of Art, 1954
Whitney Museum of American Art, 1961
Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, PA, 1961, 1963
Gallery Scheiner, Basel, Switzerland, 1978

Reference:
Who Was Who in American Art 1564-1975: 400 Years of Artists in America, Peter Hastings Falk, Sound View Press 1999, Vol. 1, page 404; E. Benezit, Dictionnaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs, et Graveurs, Jacques Busse, 1999 Nouvelle Édition, Gründ 1911, Vol. 2, page 701; Art in the San Francisco Bay Area: 1945-1980, Thomas Albright, University of California Press, 1985, page 263; A Dictionary of Contemporary American Artists, Paul Cummings, St. Martin’s Press: New York 1966, page 66-67; Mallett’s Index of Artists, Supplement, Daniel Trowbridge Mallett, Peter Smith: New York 1948 Edition, R.R. Bowker Company 1940, page 31; Richard Bowman: Radiant Abstractions, essays by Patricia Watts and Stefanie De Winter, published by Watts Art Publications, 2018; Richard Bowman: Forty years of Abstract Painting, edited by Kim Eagle-Smith, Published by Harold Parker in collaboration with Harcourts Gallery, Inc., 1986; Richard Bowman, Paintings and Reflections, 1943-1961, San Francisco Museum of Art, 1961; A Commentary on the Relation of Science and Art, in Conjunction With a Retrospective of Paintings, Stanford University Art Gallery, 1956; Richard Bowman, Paintings, 1943-1972, Roswell Museum and Art Center, 1972; et al. less