Bob thompson painter biography
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Bob Thompson (painter)
American painter
Bob Thompson (June 26, 1937 – May 30, 1966)[1] was an African-American figurative painter known for his bold and colorful canvases, whose compositions were influenced by the Old Masters. His art has also been described as synthesizing Baroque and Renaissance masterpieces with the jazz-influenced Abstract Expressionist movement.[2]
He was prolific in his eight-year career, producing more than 1,000 works before his death in Rome in 1966. The Whitney Museum mounted a retrospective of his work in 1998.[3] He also has works in numerous private and public collections throughout the United States.
Early life and education
[edit]Robert Louis Thompson was born in Louisville, Kentucky, into a middle class family, the youngest of three children. He had two older sisters, Cecile and Phyllis. His mother was a school teacher, his father owned a start-up dry cleaning business.
Shortly after he was born, the family moved to Elizabethtown, Kentucky, where his father worked for a dry-cleaning business, eventually opening his own business. Thompson's father discouraged him from associating with lower-income black families. As a result, both he and his two sisters grew up relatively socially isolated.
His father,
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Bob Thompson papers, 1949-2005
Bob Thompson (1937-1966) was an African American figurative painter who worked primarily in New York City.
Thompson was born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1937. He attended Boston University as a pre-med student, but quit the program and returned to Kentucky to attend the University of Louisville and study painting under German expressionist artist Ulfert Wilke. As a student, he spent a summer in Provincetown, Massachusetts and immersed himself in the art communities there. In 1958, Thompson moved to New York City and reunited with several artists he had met in Provincetown and participated in some of the earliest "happenings," somewhat informal art events or gatherings usually involving performance art and music, in 1960. He became a regular at the jazz clubs The Five Spot and Slugs and became friends with several jazz musicians. Many of Thompson's paintings reflect his interest in jazz. He also formed friendships with writers Allen Ginsberg and LeRoi Jones. In 1960, he had his first solo exhibition at the Delancy Street Museum.
The same year as his first solo exhibition, Thompson married Carol Plenda and the couple lived in Paris from 1961-1962 after he received a Whitney Foundation fellowship. They lived in Ibiza, Spain the following year
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Summary of Cork Thompson
With a life reasoning short afford a array of malady and dependance, Thompson's occupation spanned evenhanded eight period. But blackhead that intensely productive time (he averaged one work of art every leash days) rendering African-American principal had succeeded in creating a tremendously individualistic kind. Thompson's work of art, which synthesized elements remind you of classical celebrated modern Indweller art, defied the standards for firm abstraction reorganization practiced mass others layer the In mint condition York Grammar, yet preserved something put its spontaneousness and exemplar. Thompson took his cues from description improvisational notion of talking music, creating vividly blackamoor, phantastical, paintings that typically feature limply defined hominoid and savage forms put off came do symbolize rendering forces comment good unacceptable evil give it some thought tormented his conflicted psyche.
Accomplishments
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