What Do You See? The Collection of Sidney Rothberg, Part I

The present and following lot are both tempera on paper works from the years just after Bob Thompson’s consequential visit to Provincetown, Massachusetts in 1958. Born in 1937, Thompson studied art at the University
of Louisville, spending a summer in Provincetown at the suggestion of his professor Mary Spencer Nay, where he forged lasting connections with Red Grooms and other artists. While there he was also introduced to the work of expressionist painter Jan Müller, a German émigré who had passed away just months before the visit. Müller’s figurative style and bold use of color, as well as his study of Old Master paintings, invigorated the younger artist for the remainder of his short career.

Painting full-time for just eight years before his death at age 28, Bob Thompson created over one thousand works and reached a prominence within the mainstream New York art world only few African-American artists of his generation achieved. Known for his allegorical paintings with sensual, larger-than-life figures, Thompson mined his art historical knowledge and his close study of classical Old Masters like Masaccio, Piero della Francesca and Goya for powerful imagery that he engaged in his deeply personal expression.

In the works on paper from Rothberg’s collection we see the artist exploring his essential themes, the nude in the landscape and the silhouetted figure on horseback, with strong diagonals and intense expressionist brushstrokes. The works balance between abstraction and figuration, their dynamic surfaces engaging the viewer’s eye in playful and energetic ways upon each engagement with them. Bob Thompson was once quoted as saying: “My painting has no style–it constantly changes– simply different images. My criterion is the integrity of the projection. I love all things that look the way I feel!” and those feelings continue to resonate in works such as these.