Background
Bernard Cohen was born on July 28, 1933, in London, United Kingdom. Cohen was a sickly child who found repose in his discovery of painting.
Central Saint Martins School of Art in London
Slade School of Art
Bernard Cohen was born on July 28, 1933, in London, United Kingdom. Cohen was a sickly child who found repose in his discovery of painting.
Bernard Cohen found repose in his discovery of painting at the Walthamstow School of Art, South West Essex Technical College. He studied at Central Saint Martins School of Art in London between 1950 and 1951, followed by the Slade School of Art during 1951 - 1954, where he was hugely influenced by William Coldstream.
In 1957 Cohen received the Boise Traveling Scholarship and, together with the French Government Scholarship awarded to him in 1954, he was able to travel and work in France, Spain, and Italy. Following various teaching positions throughout the 60s and 70s at Ealing School of Art, the Slade, Chelsea College of Art and Design, the Royal College of Art and the University of New Mexico, in 1988 he was appointed Professor and Director of the Slade School of Art, a position held until 2000. He was part of The Situation Group, featuring in their group portrait by Sylvia Sleigh (1961) which is currently on display at the National Portrait Gallery, London.
Cohen's first solo exhibition in London took place at Gimpel Fils, in 1958. His work has been exhibited widely as part of several international touring British Council exhibitions. Other notable exhibitions included, 'Five Young British Artists', the 1966 Venice Biennale's British Pavilion show, a retrospective at the Hayward Gallery in 1972 titled 'Bernard Cohen, Paintings and Drawings 1959 - 1971', which toured to Newcastle and Leeds, 'Artist in Focus, Six Paintings from the Tate Gallery Collection', Tate, London (1995), and a current 'Spotlight Display' gallery at Tate Britain. His international exhibitions included 'Stroll on! Aspects of British Abstract Art in the Sixties', Mamco, Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain, Geneva in 2006; and 'Abstraction and the Human Figure at CAM’s British Art Collection', Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon in 2010. Cohen was invited by Michael Craig-Martin to exhibit at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, 2015.
His paintings are concerned with the process as much as image, with an early influence being abstract Expressionism, often involving overlapping patterns, shapes, and line, producing multiple images within each composition. This complexity invites viewers to spend time understanding the relationships between these different elements as well as experiencing them together as one coherent picture. Both individually and collectively, Cohen’s works can be seen as a series of diagrams about painting. He has said that he is 'looking for ways of making paintings that contain paintings.'
The Artist's work is currently held in the collections of the Tate; V&A Museum; Government Art Collection; Arts Council; British Council; BBC; UCL Art Museum; Ben Uri Gallery; Swindon Art Gallery; Hepworth Wakefield; Walker Art Gallery and University of Liverpool; The Whitworth, Manchester; Burton Gallery, Leeds; National Museums Northern Ireland; Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Portugal; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art; and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York.
According to Cohen, his paintings can be seen to contain multiple paintings within their composition, held together by an overall organizing principle of rhythm. There’s something ambitious about the way Cohen conflates so many modes of painting together, something impossible about the problems he sets for himself. There’s an overweening ambition to paint the whole world, to paint an overview – to get everything conceivable into each painting. Cohen wants to get away from the self and immerse himself in the world – but it’s a world that has fragmented downwards into chains of tiny particles.
Quotations: "I will not begin the painting until something I have never seen or considered before comes into my mind’s eye, and then I will focus on it and the means I shall use to bring it to life on the canvas."
Bernard was a part of the Situation Artistic Group.
Bernard Cohen has described himself as "A storyteller and a creator of pictorial theatre."
Married Jean Britton in 1959.