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Frank Bowling: Driven to Draw
This summer, the Royal Drawing School presents Frank Bowling: Driven to Draw, an exhibition dedicated to the drawing practice of Sir Frank Bowling OBE RA, one of the most significant artists of his generation.
Spanning more than sixty years, the exhibition brings together works drawn from the artist’s personal archive, offering a rare and intimate insight into the role drawing has played throughout his life and practice.
Widely celebrated for his monumental abstract paintings, Bowling has consistently used drawing as a vital means of thinking, experimenting and recording ideas. As his son Ben Bowling recently reflected, drawing is for Bowling a “first order activity” — a fundamental human need, akin to eating and breathing, and a primary way of communicating. This exhibition reveals that instinctive and lifelong relationship with drawing, tracing the development of his visual language from his student years to the present day.
The exhibition is organised by the Royal Drawing School in collaboration with the Frank Bowling Studio and the Frank Bowling Foundation.
The exhibition is kindly supported by The Maria Manetti & Jan Shrem Foundation
Spanning more than sixty years, the exhibition brings together works drawn from the artist’s personal archive, offering a rare and intimate insight into the role drawing has played throughout his life and practice.
Widely celebrated for his monumental abstract paintings, Bowling has consistently used drawing as a vital means of thinking, experimenting and recording ideas. As his son Ben Bowling recently reflected, drawing is for Bowling a “first order activity” — a fundamental human need, akin to eating and breathing, and a primary way of communicating. This exhibition reveals that instinctive and lifelong relationship with drawing, tracing the development of his visual language from his student years to the present day.
The exhibition is organised by the Royal Drawing School in collaboration with the Frank Bowling Studio and the Frank Bowling Foundation.
The exhibition is kindly supported by The Maria Manetti & Jan Shrem Foundation
Thu 25 Jun to Saturday 22 Aug 26
19-22 Charlotte Rd London EC2A 3SG
25 June – 22 August 2026Mon–Fri 10am–5pm & Sat 10am–4pm
Free entry, or £7.50 donation welcome. Booking required
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