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Bob Thompson (1937-1966) Untitled (Figures with a Blue Bird), 1962
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Details
Signed and dated ‘B Thompson ’62’ (lower left); signed three times on the reverse, twice dated ’62’ and once inscribed ‘Paris’.
Sizes:
Artwork: 39 × 30 cm | 15.4 × 11.8 in
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.
Provenance
Private Collection, Paris, France.
Acquired from the above in 2018.
Condition Report
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.
Shipping
Packed as size XS (up to 40 × 30 cm) · 39 × 30 cm
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Authenticity & Buyer Information
This lot is catalogued under the artist’s name without qualification. Provenance, dating and condition are described to the best of our knowledge; the sale is governed by our Conditions of Sale.
Buyers should review the catalogue carefully and raise any questions before bidding; additional information is not ordinarily provided after the auction.
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Market context
Gouaches by Bob Thompson from his Paris and Ibiza years of 1962–63 have sold at auction from about 10,000 USD for a sheet of 10 x 13 cm to 75,600 USD for one of 54 x 45 cm, both including premium; this sheet of 39 x 30 cm sits between the two in size.
| Date | Sale | Work | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| 8 December 2020 | Phillips, New York | The Beg, 1962–63, gouache on paper, inscribed Paris on the reverse, 54.3 x 45.4 cm | 75,600 USD with premium (estimate 30,000–50,000) |
| 15 December 2021 | Christie's, New York (online) | Untitled, 1963, pastel and gouache on paper mounted on panel, 10.2 x 13.3 cm | 10,625 USD with premium (estimate 8,000–12,000) |
Prices as published by the selling houses, including their buyer’s premium, in the currency of the sale. Estimate for this lot: €15,000–20,000.
What it costs
Bidding on this site, the buyer’s premium is 25%, Spanish IVA included. There is no VAT on the hammer price and no card fee.
| Starting price | Low estimate | High estimate | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hammer price | €8,000 | €15,000 | €20,000 |
| Buyer’s premium 25% (IVA included) | €2,000 | €3,750 | €5,000 |
| Total on auroraathena.com | €10,000 | €18,750 | €25,000 |
| Total through a bidding platform (30%) | €10,400 | €19,500 | €26,000 |
Through LiveAuctioneers, Invaluable, Drouot or Bidspirit the premium is 30%: the same hammer of €20,000 costs €26,000 there against €25,000 here. Shipping and insurance are quoted separately; the estimator below gives the figure for your country. Buyers outside the EU pay no Spanish tax on the lot; the destination’s import rules apply (United States: original paintings and drawings enter duty-free; United Kingdom: 5% import VAT on art). Card payments are accepted up to €10,000; larger amounts by bank transfer.
Questions about this lot
How does the estimate compare with the artist’s recent auction results?
Gouaches by Bob Thompson from his Paris and Ibiza years of 1962–63 have sold at auction from about 10,000 USD for a sheet of 10 x 13 cm to 75,600 USD for one of 54 x 45 cm, both including premium; this sheet of 39 x 30 cm sits between the two in size.
The results we compared are listed under “Market context” on this page, each with its source, so you can check them.
What will this lot cost in total?
Bidding on this site, the buyer’s premium is 25%, Spanish IVA included, and there is no VAT on the hammer price and no card fee: at the starting price of €8,000 the total is €10,000; at the low estimate of €15,000 the total is €18,750; at the high estimate of €20,000 the total is €25,000.
Through LiveAuctioneers, Invaluable, Drouot or Bidspirit the premium is 30%, so the same hammer of €20,000 costs €26,000 there. Shipping and insurance are quoted separately; the estimator on this page gives the figure for your country. Buyers outside the EU pay no Spanish tax on the lot; the destination’s import rules apply (United States: original paintings and drawings enter duty-free; United Kingdom: 5% import VAT on art). Card payments are accepted up to €10,000; larger amounts by bank transfer.
How is this lot catalogued?
Under the artist’s name without qualification. Provenance, dating, condition and value are described to the best of our knowledge; the sale is governed by the Conditions of Sale.
Can I see the condition report, more photographs or the work itself?
A condition report with ultraviolet photographs is prepared on request, normally within two working days; the condition summary on this page is examined in-house and is not a conservator’s report. Further photographs of any detail, the reverse or the frame are sent on request. The work can be examined in our Barcelona showroom by appointment before the sale, and you are welcome to send your own conservator or specialist.
How does bidding work, and can a maximum bid make me overpay?
You can leave a maximum bid before the sale (the sale is on Saturday, November 28th - 17:00 (CET)) or bid live in our online room. A maximum bid is executed by the auctioneer only as much as is needed to stay ahead of other bidders, in the sale’s increments, never above your maximum.
Where a reserve exists it never exceeds the low estimate; a lot without a reserve sells to the highest bid at or above the starting price of €8,000.
Is there a limit on how much I can bid?
Every account is approved for bidding as soon as the e-mail address is confirmed, with a limit of €5,000 per bid until the identity is verified. The limit applies everywhere: in the live room, on the lot page and to maximum bids. To bid without a limit, verify your identity in your account on this site: it takes about three minutes on a phone, is done once, and the limit is lifted automatically as soon as the check is complete. Please do it at least an hour before the sale.
Bob Thompson
Bob Thompson was born Robert Louis Thompson in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1937. He began pre-medical studies at Boston University and left them to study painting at the University of Louisville. In the summer of 1958 he worked at the Seong Moy school in Provincetown, where he met Red Grooms and the circle of young figurative painters around Jan Müller’s widow Dody, and that autumn he moved to New York. On the Lower East Side he lived among jazz musicians and poets, took part in the first Happenings and had his first solo exhibition in 1960, the year he married Carol Plenda.
A Whitney Foundation fellowship in 1961 took the couple to London and Paris, and from there to Ibiza. In the museums of Europe Thompson studied Poussin, Piero della Francesca, Titian and Goya, and he made their compositions the armature of his own pictures.
His mature work restages bacchanals, depositions and allegories of the old masters with flat, faceless figures in pure reds, blues and yellows, accompanied by birds and beasts, in a manner that owes as much to Matisse, Gauguin and the improvisation of jazz as to its sources. Back in New York he showed with the Martha Jackson Gallery from 1963 with great success. In 1965 he returned to Europe and settled in Rome, where he died in May 1966, a month before his twenty-ninth birthday.
In eight years he made about a thousand paintings and drawings. The Whitney Museum of American Art gave him a retrospective in 1998, and his work is in the Whitney, the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
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