Robert (Bob) Thompson

Robert Thompson (American, 1937-1966)

Thompson studied painting briefly at the University of Kentucky before moving to New York City in 1958, where he was involved in the Beat Movement and Happenings. A Gutman Foundation Grant and a Whitney Fellowship financed his 1961 trip to Europe where he remained; he died in Rome at age 28 from addiction. The subject of a 1998 Whitney retrospective, Thompson’s bold, figurative paintings draw inspiration from mythology, the New Testament, and European old masters. Executed in a palette of primary colors, unmodelled figures dramatize narratives in flattened landscapes.

Important Source Material:

Golden, Thelma and Judith Wilson. Bob Thompson. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art; Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998.

Bob Thompson: Meteor in a Black Hat. New York: Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, 2005.

NHS