BOB THOMPSON by Thelma Golden with essays by Shamim Momim and Judith Wilson

Whitney Museum / University of California Press, 1998 First edition, 200 pp., 9 1/4" X 11 1/2" Hardcover Near fine Bob Thompson (1937-1966) was a figurative expressionist painter active in literary, musical, and artistic circles in New York and Europe from the late 1950s until his death in 1966. In the first book devoted solely to Thompson, the life and work of this pivotal figure in modern American art history and African American culture receive the attention they deserve.Judith Wilson situates Bob Thompson within the context of both contemporary artistic production and cultural trends of the fifties and sixties. She uses interviews, Thompson's diary entries and letters to his family, and his work to give a thoughtful and thorough interpretation of his art and persona. She traces Thompson's development—psychologically, socially, and artistically—effectively portraying his first encounters with art and bohemian culture and his intensely active period in Europe shortly before his death