Artist

Bob Thompson

born Louisville, KY 1937-died Rome, Italy 1966
Born
Louisville, Kentucky, United States
Died
Rome, Italy
Active in
  • New York, New York, United States
Biography

Bob Thompson's short, but dynamic, career began in the late 1950s and ended in his premature death less than a decade later. Like other artists of his generation in New York, Thompson developed a vital new figurative style in reaction to the dominance of abstract art, yet adapted its spontaneity, scale, and expressive use of color.

The Spinning, Spinning, Turning, Directing [SAAM, 1980.137.104] is a drama of bold exaggerations. Its principals are fantastic creatures whose silhouettes and unnatural colors distort their human, animal, or phantom origins. Sweeping curves, sharp zigzags, and steep diagonals rhythmically link the figures as they stand, sit, fall, or fly in their arbitrary space. A single tree in an arched opening focuses the scene, suggesting a cave that shelters its strange inhabitants from a brightly lit landscape.

Thompson was inspired by the play of good and evil, which creates both order and chaos in the relationships of man, animals, and nature. In his vision, nude female figures express nature's sensuality, while birds symbolize power and freedom as well as his preoccupation with the ultimate flight of death. Thompson revered the Old Masters, including Piero della Francesca, Masaccio, and Poussin, and used their works as points of departure. In The Spinning, Spinning, Turning, Directing, he reinterpreted images from three of Goya's Los Caprichos: Tale Bearers, Hobgoblins, andRise and Fall. Whether sensual, spiritual, or tortured, Thompson's paintings are metaphors of both the rational and irrational forces of nature.

Lynda Roscoe Hartigan African-American Art: 19th and 20th-Century Selections (brochure. Washington, D.C.: National Museum of American Art)



Works by this artist (2 items)

John Buck, Father and Son, 1986, color woodcut on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Lichtenberg Family Foundation, 1989.33, © 1986, John Buck
Father and Son
Date1986
color woodcut on paper
Not on view
Red Jesus
Date1986
color woodcut on paper
Not on view