Bob Thompson

American, 1937 - 1966

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African American painter (1937–1966)

Explore Selected Works

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Running Woman

Bob Thompson · 1965 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  2015.19.235

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Red Nude on Beach

Bob Thompson · 1965 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  2015.19.233

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The Conversion of St. Paul

Bob Thompson · 1964 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  2015.19.234

Painted mostly with areas of flat, vibrant color, eight people or animals, or possibly hybrids, span and fill this horizontal, abstracted composition. The people and creatures’ features are simplified and stylized into bold forms. To our left, a winged woman holds out her arms and grips an uprooted tree, which creates a diagonal up the center of the composition. The woman has fire engine-red hair and grayish-green shadows on her pale, peach face. Her royal-blue dress has a low, sweetheart neckline and her breasts are outlined in a thick black line. The tree she holds has three roots and one branch, which holds a round disk covered in colorful dots, like a nonpareil candy. In front of her, a lemon-yellow person overlaps or becomes a pink, lizard-like creature. The yellow being has red eyes and nostrils, a black cap or hair, and black outlines around the eyes and nose. The creature at the back end has wide red lips, a red-rimmed, black eye, the suggestion of black hair, and red, presumably blood, trickling out of its parted mouth. Closer to us and seen from the waist up, a person with red eyes and lips, brown skin, black hair, and a pink bodice stands with arms overhead, as if holding opposite elbows. The eyes and mouth make wide-open Os. On the right half of the picture, a scarlet-red person with its lower jaw drooping open sits on a white form like a ghost, and plunges one hand, wrist-deep, into the ghost-like form’s mouth. The white creature has red eyes, blue hair, and lies on its back. A brown creature with sharp teeth and a red tongue and eyes reaches up from the bottom edge of the canvas. One clawed hand clutches the white figure’s face over the left ear and the other nails or talons snag onto the red creature’s knee. The final creature has red lips, nose, eyes, hands, and yellow teeth, and it lurks in the background above and behind the red and white pair. Resembling an octopus, it has two arms and three legs, and is mottled with violet purple and carnation pink. The areas around and behind all the figures are expanses of grass green, bubblegum pink, butter yellow, blue, dark gray, or white to suggest a landscape.
Bob Thompson, Tree, 1962, oil on canvas, Collection of Barney A. Ebsworth, 2000.39.3

Tree

Bob Thompson · 1962 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  2000.39.3

Bibliography

1978

  • Coker, Gylbert. The World of Bob Thompson. Exh. cat. Studio Museum in Harlem. New York, 1978.