Post War & Contemporary Art 
13 November 2024
Bob Thompson, Bird War - Image 1 of 3
Bob Thompson, Bird War - Image 2 of 3
Bob Thompson, Bird War - Image 3 of 3
Post War & Contemporary Art 
Bob Thompson, Bird War - Image 1 of 3
Bob Thompson, Bird War - Image 2 of 3
Bob Thompson, Bird War - Image 3 of 3
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Bob Thompson 1937–1966

Bird War

1964
oil on canvas 9 h × 12⅛ w in (23 × 31 cm)
estimate: $60,000–80,000
result: $170,100
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Signed, titled, dated and inscribed to verso ‘B. Thompson '64 N.Y. Bird War’.
provenance: The Artist | Acquired from the previous in 1964 via Richard Gray Gallery, Chicago, Private Collection, Chicago | Acquired from the previous in 1965, Richard Gray Gallery, Chicago | Acquired from the previous in 1966, Estate of Maya and David Friedler, Chicago
exhibited: Bob Thompson: New Paintings, 6 - 30 May 1965, Richard Gray Gallery, Chicago

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Bird War

Bob Thompson's Ode to Goya

While Bob Thompson's jazz-inflected Abstract Expressionist compositions seem very much in sync with mid-20th century artistic currents, he was actually quite influenced by various European Old Masters who were active during the Renaissance or Baroque period, such as Tintoretto, Piero della Francesca, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Nicolas Poussin, and Francisco de Goya y Lucientes. Thompson spent much of the early 1960s traveling or living in Europe with his wife, Carol, until his untimely death in 1966. This included stops in England, France, Italy, and Spain.

Thompson's 1964 oil on canvas, Bird War, has a famous art historical antecedent: “The 2nd of May 1808 in Madrid, or "The Fight Against the Mamelukes”, a large-scale 1814 oil painting by Goya. This work is held in the permanent collection of the Prado Museum in Madrid and dramatizes an epic battle scene between the Spanish people and French soldiers.

Thompson's 1964 oil on canvas, Bird War, has a famous art historical antecedent: The 2nd of May 1808 in Madrid, or “The Fight Against the Mamelukes”, a large-scale 1814 oil painting by Goya.

In 1814, King Ferdinand VII's return to Spain, following his captivity under Napoleon, was celebrated by preparations across Madrid, including commemorations of the May 2, 1808, uprising against the French. The Spanish Regency Council commissioned Goya to create two paintings capturing this pivotal event: The 2nd of May 1808 and The 3rd of May 1808, depicting Madrid's street fight against French troops and the ensuing French retaliation. Initially funded by the Regency, the project was later financed by the king himself, who intended the works for display in the Royal Palace.

Goya's paintings, celebrated for their realistic intensity, avoid decorative embellishments, focusing instead on representing the bravery and diversity of the Spanish people who rose against the French. Various locations in Madrid are suggested as the setting for the scenes, likely chosen to highlight the Royal Palace, symbolizing the monarchy and loyalty to Ferdinand throughout the war. These artworks endure as iconic representations of resistance and national identity, preserved through careful restoration (2007-08) and historical inquiry.

While Thompson recreates the general pattern of the battle scene in Goya's The 2nd of May 1808 in Madrid—through the use of colorful silhouettes of horses, combattants, and swords—he embellishes the conflagration with birds that certain soldiers have grasped around their legs, preventing them from taking flight. Thompson's Bird War serves as an ode to one of his important stylistic touchstones, but it also comments implicitly on the ongoing nature of war as a force of division that keeps humanity grounded, so to speak. Given Thompson's rich knowledge of jazz and involvement with various key figures, the painting's title might allude as well to saxophonist and composer Charlie “Bird” Parker, whose short but impactful life ended nearly a decade prior in 1955.

I paint many paintings that tell me slowly that I have something inside of me that is just bursting, twisting, sticking, spilling over to get out.

Bob Thompson, The World of Bob Thompson

Bob Thompson 1937–1966

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Born in Louisville, Kentucky, Bob Thompson had a short but dynamic career as a figurative painter whose works collided Baroque and Renaissance aesthetics with Abstract Expressionism. Thompson’s mother was a schoolteacher and his father ran a dry-cleaning business before his death by car accident when Thompson was only thirteen. As a young man, Thompson was briefly enrolled as a pre-med student at Boston University from 1955 to 1956, after which he dropped out to study painting at the University of Louisville. Among his teachers were Ulfert Wilke, Mary Spencer Nay, and Charles Crodel.

Thompson moved to New York City in 1958, befriending jazz musicians including Charlie Haden and Ornette Coleman as well as writers and artists such as Allen Ginsberg, LeRoi Jones, Red Grooms, and Allan Kaprow. He had his first solo exhibition in 1960 at the Delancey Street Museum and soon after would show on multiple occasions at Martha Jackson Gallery as well as Detroit’s Donald Morris Gallery. Broadly, Thompson’s work was concerned with the dichotomies of good and evil, as well as man and nature, and paintings were strongly influenced by jazz music and culture. As Lynda Roscoe Hartigan writes, “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… Whether sensual, spiritual, or tortured, Thompson's paintings are metaphors of both the rational and irrational forces of nature.” Thompson’s most well-known work may be Homage to Nina Simone, which was among the last paintings he made before his death.

Thompson married Carol Plenda in 1960 and, using funds from his Whitney Foundation fellowship, the couple moved to Europe in 1961 and traveled extensively. In 1966, at the age of 28, Thompson died of a heroin overdose while in Rome. Following his premature death, the New School exhibited his works in 1968 followed by the Speed Art Museum in 1971. He was honored with a retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1998. Today his works are held in the public collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the California African American Museum in Los Angeles, the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, the Detroit Institute of the Arts, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and many others.

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