Bob Thompson (painter)

Infobox Person
name = Bob Thompson

---

image_size =
caption = Bob Thompson in his Studio in New York
(Photograph: Charles Rotmil)
birth_date = birth date|1937|6|26|
birth_place = Louisville, Kentucky, United States
birth_name = Robert Louis Thompson
death_date = 1966
death_place = Rome, Italy
occupation = Figurative painter

Career and Life Moments

Bob Thompson (1937-1966) was an African-American figurative painter known for his bold and colorful canvases, whose compositions were appropriated from the Old Masters. He was very prolific in his eight-year career, producing over one thousand works before his death in Rome, Italy in 1966. The Whitney Museum in New York mounted a retrospective of his work in 1998. He also has works in numerous private and public collections throughout the United States.

Thompson was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky. His father died in a car crash when he was 13, and he lived with relatives who exposed him to art and jazz. [ [http://www.aaregistry.com/african_american_history/961/_Robert_Thompson_painter_genus] , "African American Registry" ]

He was briefly a pre-med student at Boston University (1955-56) but dropped out and returned to the University of Louisville (1957-58) where he studied painting under German expressionist Ulfert Wilke. In 1958 he moved to New York City where he formed friendships with jazz musicians such as Charlie Haden and Ornette Coleman while a regular at the jazz clubs The Five Spot and The Slug. He also formed friendships with writers Allen Ginsberg and LeRoi Jones in addition to fellow artists Lester Johnson, Red Grooms, Mimi Gross, and Alan Kaprow, with whom he participated in some of the earliest Happenings. In 1960, he had his first solo exhibition at the Delancy Street Museum and later at the Martha Jackson Gallery where he had solo exhibitions in 1963-4, and 1965.

He and his wife later moved to Europe to further develop his work and draw inspiration from the European Old Masters, also with the goal of escaping drugs. However, his heroin-use took its toll. He died of complications from gall bladder surgery in Rome, Italy in 1966. [ [http://www.aaregistry.com/african_american_history/961/_Robert_Thompson_painter_genus] , "African American Registry" ]

References