Artist Talk | Adger and Eden Cowans: Making His Mark: Seven Decades of Paintings by Adger Cowans
Wednesday October 8th, 2025 - 5 PM EST | Online Conversation
In conjunction with our current exhibition, Making His Mark: Seven Decades of Paintings by Adger Cowans, Bruce Silverstein Gallery invites you to attend an online conversation between Adger Cowans and his son, Eden, to discuss Adger's artistic process and his love of painting.
Well known for his photography, this is the first exhibition dedicated solely to the paintings of Adger Cowans (b. 1936). Featuring a selection of works spanning his career, from the mid-1960s to the present, the show offers a rare and overdue opportunity to engage with an artist whose innovative use of found and handmade tools has produced a deeply original body of abstract work. While friends such as Peter Bradley, Ed Clark, and Jack Whitten have received long-overdue recognition in recent decades, Cowans has continued to work in near-total obscurity. Yet his contributions to abstraction—and the material innovations that would later be echoed by others—have been substantial and singular.
Adger Cowans (b. 1936) is a painter, photographer and filmmaker whose career spans more than six decades. Cowans studied photography at Ohio University and became one of the first African American students to graduate the field in 1958. He later pursued training at the School of Motion Picture Arts and the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Cowans’ work has been exhibited at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, The Studio Museum of Harlem, The Cleveland Museum of Art, and Harvard Art Museums, among others.
Raised in a family of artists, Eden Cowans is the son of photographer-painter Adger Cowans and painter-sculptor Barbara Chavous. His upbringing shaped a deep appreciation for creativity and artistic dialogue.
