Wholesale Bob Thompson: So let us all be citizens by Bob Thompson

[David Zwirner Books] A colorful, fantastical, and musical body of work by the painter Bob Thompson “Thompson, who finally seems to be on fame’s doorstep, invents in much the same way: he makes you feel how it might have felt to see a picture of an angel for the first time.” —The New Yorker Influenced by ??jazz, Bob Thompson painted spirited, colorful compositions that feature an interplay of bodies, allegories, and natural landscapes while reconfiguring European masterworks. Though his career as a painter spanned only a brief period, from 1958 to his untimely death in 1966, at age twenty-eight, Thompson left behind a singular and influential body of figurative work that remains vitally resonant. Looking at his particular consideration of color, line, and figuration—developed during a period when abstraction was the dominant trend in American art—this intimate exhibition catalogue, the seventh volume in the Clarion series, pays homage to the friction Thompson generated betwee