Description:

Bob Thompson
(African American; 1937 - 1966)
Untitled
Oil on cardboard
c. 1961. Signed lower left: "B. Thompson '61"
Signed verso: "B. Thompson '61"

Provenance: Private Collection, New York
Exhibited: Jason McCoy Gallery, New York. PAPER BAND, curated by Stephanie Buhmann. July 11 - August 24, 2012.

Born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1937, Bob Thompson studied art at the University of Louisville and Boston University before moving to New York in 1959. Between 1961 and 1966, he traveled the European continent, immersing himself in museums and painting. He produced approximately 1000 paintings and drawings in a career cut short by his untimely death in Rome.

Thompson blended the compositions of Renaissance and Baroque masterworks with the painterly freedom espoused by Abstract Expressionism and the brazen color palette of the German Expressionists. In so doing, he made traditional themes relevant for a contemporary audience.

His first solo exhibition was held at the Delancey Street Gallery, NY in 1960. From there he exhibited widely, including the Art Institute of Chicago, 1964; Dayton Art Institute, 1964; the Martha Jackson Gallery, NY, 1963-4, 1968, 1976; Richard Gray Gallery, Chicago, 1964, 1965; Paula Johnson Gallery, NY, 1964; Brooklyn College, 1969; Boston Museum of Fine Art, 1970; and the La Jolla Museum of Art, 1970, and the Studio Museum in Harlem, 1978. Most recently, in 1988, the Whitney Museum of American Art held a major traveling retrospective of his work featuring over 100 of his paintings.

His work may be found in the public collections of the Art Institute of Chicago; Brooklyn Museum of Art; Dayton Art Institute; Denver Art Museum; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden; Indianapolis Museum of Art,? LaJolla Museum of Art; The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Minneapolis Institute of Arts; Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, NC; Museum of Art, Utica, NY;?Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Museum of the National Center of Afro American Artists, Boston, MA; Nasher Museum of Art, Duke University, Durham, NC;?National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, NJ; New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA; The Newark Museum, Newark, NJ; Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; The Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL; Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Washington, DC; The Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY; University Art Museum, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA; University of Louisville, Louisville, KY; Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY.

27.5" x 40.75" (image). 33" x 46" (frame).

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May 30, 2013 1:00 PM EDT
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