Enduring Voices Catalogue (6-21-23) - Flipbook - Page 39
Bob
THOMPSON
(1937-1966)
Born in Louisville, Kentucky, Bob Thompson dropped out of
medical school to study art at the University of Louisville. He had
lost his father in a car crash when he was thirteen, and his mother,
a school teacher, had stressed the importance of education during
his formative years.
After college, Thompson moved to New York City and became an
involved member of the local artist community as well as the jazz
club scene. He quickly gained a reputation as a talented bohemian
artist, known for his bold and colorful canvases and his manner of
appropriating themes from the Old Masters for his own paintings.
His paintings were colorful, figurative, raw, and bright. From 1961
to 1963, Thompson traveled throughout Europe with his wife,
expanding his presence in the Abstract Expressionist movement.
Back in New York in 1963, a friend helped Thompson land a solo
exhibition in the gallery of Martha Jackson. His association with
the highly influential Jackson gained him fast recognition in the
art world, and his paintings were soon appearing in exhibitions
throughout the nation. Critics proclaimed him a genius, a master
of Renaissance themes with a contemporary focus.
BOB THOMPSON
AFRICAN AMERICAN ART
African American art is now generally very topical.
There is a thread that we are seeing in many of the
current exhibitions that feature African American
artists generally, and African American women
artists in particular. Some African American artists
were able to work within the dominant tradition and
contributed substantially to it. Yet whole generations
of African American artists were excluded from this
tradition. It is here and now that you can see this,
illustrated by various works. This is a gap within art
history that we are now only beginning to fill. Bob
Thompson is another example that defies definition.
This is an artist David loves. He looks like folk art, but
almost every scene refers to great literature or great
paintings or both. I’d love to talk with Bob Thompson.
We have only one other work by him — a unique
linoleum cut with a note from his wife that Bob did it.
–Susan S. and David R. Goode
In the fall of 1965, Thompson traveled to Rome to further study
Renaissance art. A short four months later, Thompson died of a
heroin overdose following gall bladder surgery. He was twenty-eight.
I paint many paintings that tell me slowly
that I have something inside of me that is just
bursting, twisting, sticking, spilling over to get
out. Out into souls and mouths and eyes that
have never seen before.
—Bob Thompson
Interesting Thompson Fact:
Despite having only an eight-year career after college, Bob Thompson had
completed more than a thousand paintings and drawings upon his death.
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