Apocalyptic visions from a shunned giant of British art – Frank Bowling review

Tate Britain, London
He is up there with Turner, Rothko and Pollock. This magnificent show, which swings from joyous foam-filled works to serious meditations about slavery, is long overdue

Why hasn’t 85-year-old Frank Bowling been honoured with lots of big museum shows before now? Born in 1934, in what was then British Guiana, he studied at the Royal College of Art alongside David Hockney and Patrick Caulfield. Yet many of his 1960s paintings were so undervalued they have long since vanished, including a self-portrait as Othello. Bowling’s neglect, however, is not just because he is black. It also has to do with the deeply unfashionable character of his painting for much of his career. His sin was to be an abstract expressionist in the wrong time and place.

At Tate Britain from 31 May to 26 August.

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