HARRY BOWDEN (1907-1965), Sausalito, Old Town, c.1949, oil on canvas, 20 x 30 inches
Harry Bowden
Harry Bowden was born in Los Angeles in 1907 where he studied at Otis Art Institute. In the late 1920s Bowden moved to New York and attended the renown National Academy of Design and the Art Students League. Returning to Los Angeles in 1931 he took a summer class taught by Hans Hofmann at UC Berkeley, and later enrolled at Chouinard Art Institute.
In 1933 he returned to New York to continue studying at Hofmann’s newly launched School of Fine Arts and to work as his assistant. While in New York, he worked with some of the leading modernists and was a co-founder of the American Abstract Artists.
Bowden was a founding member of the American Abstracts Artists Group in New York in 1936, where he worked with Fernand Leger, George McNeil, Willem de Kooning, and Hans Hoffman. His work was referred to as “Cezannesque” by Ad Reinhardt, and appreciated by Still and Rothko among others.
In an exhibition brochure for a show at the New School for Social Research in 1940, Bowden expressed the sentiment that led him into joining the American Abstract Artists and illustrates his method:
“An artist, who only portrays a geometric arrangement of colored forms he has in mind, contributes nothing more than the artist who tries to copy nature. They show us the possibilities of a painting, but do not fulfill the promise…. A painting embraces many ideas, symbols, forms, tones, and colors, but all are resolved into a new thing. The metamorphosis make the painting real—gives it a life of its own.”
In 1942 he returned to northern California and settled in Sausalito.
Selected Exhibitions
1931 Paul Elder Gallery, San Francisco
1932 American Abstract Artists, NYC
1937-39 SFMA
1945, 50 De Young Museum
1948 Gumps, SF
1940’s CSFA
1948 East West Gallery, SF
1955 CPLH
Selected Collections
UCLA Library
MOMA
WWAA 1947-62
Oakland Museum