Biography
Bernard Cohen has described himself as "A storyteller and a
creator of pictorial theatre". His tensely wrought and
unpredictably complex pictures hold a unique position within the
canon of contemporary art.
Born in London in 1933, he studied at the Slade School of Fine Art
from 1951-1954. In 1988 he was appointed Professor and Director of
the Slade.
Cohen came to prominence during the 1960s and has since exhibited
widely. Ten of Cohen's paintings are in the permanent collection of
the Tate Gallery. His first solo exhibition with Flowers was in
1998, and in 2007 the gallery hosted Bernard Cohen: Paintings
from the Sixties, focusing on an important period in Cohen's
artistic development. In 2009 Work of Six Decades
celebrated his career by bringing together a selection of key
works. A comprehensive book accompanied this exhibition.
Other important shows include Artist in Focus, six
paintings from the Tate Gallery Collection, The Tate Gallery,
London in 1996 and Stroll on! Aspects of British Abstract Art
in the Sixties, Mamco, Geneva in 2006. He is currently showing
as a part of Abstraction and the Human Figure in CAMs
British Art Collection, Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon.
Bernard Cohen currently lives and works in London.
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