Subasta Bidspirit | Bob Thompson (1937-1966)

Bob Thompson (1937-1966) - Untitled (Figures with a Blue Bird), 1962. Bob Thompson (1937-1966) | American Untitled (Figures with a Blue Bird) , 1962 Gouache on Paper laid down on Masonite Signed: Signed and dated ‘B Thompson ’62’ (lower left); signed three times on the reverse, twice dated ’62’ and once inscribed ‘Paris’. Dimensions: Artwork: 39 × 30 cm | 15.4 × 11.8 in Provenance: Private Collection, Paris, France. Acquired from the above in 2018. Condition: Gouache on a printed page laid down on hardboard. The colours are fresh; the corners of the board are bumped, with small losses to the paper at the lower right and upper left corners and along the edges, a few old creases in the sheet and scattered minor abrasions to the paint, the most visible near the lower right corner; unframed. Please contact us to request a detailed Condition Report. Conditions of Sale: All lots are sold as is, in the condition described. The condition summary is given as a courtesy; a full condition report is available on request before the sale. Attributions are governed by our Terms and Conditions. All enquiries must be made before bidding; no further information can be provided after the sale. By placing a bid you confirm that you have read and accept our Terms and Conditions in full, as set out in the terms of this sale. Shipping: Aurora & Athena coordinates professional, insured shipping for every purchase through vetted logistics partners: packing, transport, insurance and the export paperwork are arranged on the buyer's behalf and charged at the provider's cost. Buyers are equally welcome to collect in Barcelona or to appoint a carrier of their own. Lots are released once the total purchase price has been received. For shipments outside the EU an export licence may be required and Spanish export duties may apply to certain higher-value works; these are the buyer's responsibility. No export tax applies within the EU. Full shipping and export information is available on request. -- A blue nude with a knot of yellow hair strides through a clearing, one arm raised to hold a red fruit, while a red figure clasps her from behind; a small yellow child and two black animals stand in the green foreground, and a great blue bird spreads its wings over the group between a brown trunk and a yellow one. The figures are flat, faceless silhouettes of unmixed colour, and the scene has the air of a half-remembered myth, an abduction or a garden of Eden, told in the language of Matisse and Gauguin. Bob Thompson painted it in Paris in 1962, the year after a fellowship took him and his wife Carol from the Lower East Side to Europe. In the museums of Europe he studied Poussin, Piero and Goya, and in small gouaches like this one he recast their bacchanals and allegories with his own cast of coloured figures, birds and beasts, the vocabulary of the large canvases that followed in Ibiza and New York. The sheet he took for it is a printed page with an ornamental green border, the imprint of the Paris printers Manzi, Joyant & Cie and the name of Le Figaro still legible at the foot, the kind of found paper he used again in 1963. He signed the board three times on the back, as he did other small works of these years. Thompson died in Rome in 1966, at twenty-eight; his eight working years are now in the Whitney, MoMA, the Metropolitan and the Art Institute of Chicago.