Dynamorph

Richard Irving Bowman

According to Patricia Watts in her monograph on Richard Bowman, page 15: “In 1966 he began his ‘Dynamorph’ series – a title composed of the Greek dyna, meaning “power” and morph, referring to the form. The Dynamorphs continued the form and concept of the Kinetogenics paintings, although they were more focused on the structure of matter. The images appear to be magnified, giving viewers the sense that they are looking into “the forming of galaxies for a kind of spatial chaos.” His series of Dynamorph paintings numbered over 100 works.

Richard Bowman studied printmaking with Mauricio Lasansky at the University of Iowa, earning his MFA in 1949. He began teaching at Stanford University in 1949, and, in the following year, he joined the faculty of the University of Manitoba where he taught for four years before returning to Northern California in 1954, settling in San Mateo County, California and taught sporadically at Stanford over the next nine years. He renewed his friendship with Onslow-Ford and, in 1959, an exhibition of their work was held at the San Francisco Museum of Art. Learn more about his life and career in our biography (link above).