What Critics Said...

Denis Bowen was among those familiar with early post-war French art and one of the first Tachiste painters in Britain. If Landscape (1954) now appears no more abstract than many St. Ives paintings, we should remember that when it was made the intention of producing a non-referential work was almost sufficient to deter mine its status.

By the time Bowen painted the paint had become freer, attaining its own momentum within the arc of the artist's gesture. His working method, making each painting in a single session, underlines the significance of painting as a physical process: to return to a work was to destroy its integrity as an unpremeditated act.

Excerpt from Catalogue for Abstract Art in the 1950's
Margaret Garlake