Robert Louis (Bob) Thompson (b. 1937, Louisville, KY – d. 1966, Rome, Italy) briefly studied medicine at Boston University before enrolling in the studio program at the University of Louisville, which had desegregated in 1951. As an art student, Thompson explored the languages of totemic abstraction then in vogue and developed an extraordinary proficiency in academic drawing. He spent the summer of 1958 in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where he continued his training at the Seong Moy School of Painting and Graphic Arts and forged valuable friendships. Thompson also encountered the work of the recently deceased German émigré artist Jan Müller (1922–1958), whose figurative style pointed him toward new expressive possibilities.
Thompson soon settled in New York City, where he joined fellow artists Allan Kaprow and Red Grooms in some of their first so-called “Happenings,” multimedia performance events. A devotee of jazz, Thompson frequented downtown clubs such as Slugs’ Saloon and the Five Spot Café, where legendary performers including Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, and Charlie Haden played. These musicians materialize in many of Thompson’s paintings and drawings including Ornette (Birmingham Museum of Art, 1960–61) and Garden of Music (Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, 1960). This pivotal period was marked by Thompson’s first solo New York City exhibition, and within the next few years his work entered some of the preeminent modern art collections in the United States.
In 1961, Thompson and his wife, Carol, made their first trip to Europe together, spending time in London and Paris and eventually settling in Ibiza. Thompson was able to fully immerse himself in the traditions that formed the core of his practice. While in Spain, he deepened his study of Francisco de Goya (1746–1828), and canvases such as Untitled (Colby College Museum of Art, 1962) demonstrate his heady dialogue with Los Caprichos, the Spanish artist’s mordantly satirical print series. On a second trip to Europe, the couple settled in Rome, where Thompson died tragically on May 30, 1966, of complications following gall bladder surgery.
Memorial exhibitions at the New School for Social Research (1969) and the Speed Art Museum (1971) celebrated his life and career. In 1998, Thelma Golden and Judith Wilson mounted a foundational scholarly retrospective of his work at the Whitney Museum of American Art. More recently, paintings by Thompson have featured in group exhibitions such as Witness: Art and Civil Rights in the Sixties; The Color Line: African-American Artists and Segregation; and Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power. The Estate of Bob Thompson is represented by Michael Rosenfeld Gallery.
– Text courtesy of Colby College Museum of Art
Bob Thompson’s work is in museum collections worldwide including Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, Little Rock, AR; Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL; Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AL; Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; California African American Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR; Colby College Museum of Art, Colby College, Waterville, ME; Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH; Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens, Jacksonville, FL; Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO; Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI; Flint Institute of Arts, Flint, MI; Greenville County Museum of Art, Greenville, SC; He Art Museum (HEM), Beijiao, Shunde, Guangdong, China; Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN; The Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC; Museum of Art, Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute, Utica, NY; The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago, IL; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, FL; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; 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 of Art, Newark, NJ; Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA; SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah, GA; The Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; The Speed Art Museum, Louisville, KY; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY; Tougaloo College Art Collections, Tougaloo, MS; University Art Museum, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA; University of Louisville Art Collection, Louisville, KY; Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY.
– Text courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery