San Francisco Beat Generation
Michael Bowen moved to San Francisco in the late 50s, and along with fellow artist comrades Arthur Monroe and Michael McCracken, lived and worked out of 72 Commercial Street. Painting spontaneous, impromptu, hectic canvases, along with assemblage and collage, Bowen became an integral part of the San Francisco Renaissance.
The Norwegian art patron and physician Reidar Wennesland befriended Bowen and many of his bohemian artist friends and collected their artwork. Bowen's work now makes up the majority of the paintings in the Wennesland Foundation Collection located in Kristiansand, Norway, alongside many other important North Beach artists, such as Jay DeFeo. A 1963 painting of Janis Joplin by Bowen, along with his prophetic 1966 Love painting, are examples of the Bowen works in the Wennesland collection. Bowen's style progressed from large abstract expressionist canvases to figuratives and large faces, to assemblage. Bowen's painting about McCarthyism, Red Future? from the Wennesland Collection, was featured in the 1995 Whitney Museum exhibition Beat Culture and the New America, 1950-1965, which opened in New York City and then traveled to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and the De Young Museum in San Francisco.
Read more about this topic: Michael Bowen (artist)
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