Estate of Mildred Thompson
Mildred Thompson
Window Painting, c. 1977
Oil on board
20 ⅜ x 18 ⅝ in (51.8 x 47.3 cm)
Framed: 21 ⅝ x 19 ⅞ x 1 ¾ in (54.9 x 50.5 x 4.4 cm)
(GL12125)
Mildred Thompson
Window Painting, c. 1977
Oil on board
23 ⅞ x 24 in (60.6 x 61 cm)
Framed: 25 ¼ x 25 ½ x 1 ¾ in (64.1 x 64.8 x 4.4 cm)
(GL13178)
Mildred Thompson
Window Painting, c. 1977
Oil on board
23 ⅞ x 21 ½ in (60.6 x 54.6 cm)
Framed: 25 x 22 ½ x 1 ¾ in (63.5 x 57.1 x 4.4 cm)
(GL13179)
Mildred Thompson
Window Painting, c. 1977
Oil on board
24 ¼ x 23 ⅞ in (61.6 x 60.6 cm)
Framed: 25 ½ x 25 x 1 ¾ in (64.8 x 63.5 x 4.4 cm)
(GL13180)
Mildred Thompson
Window Painting, c. 1977
Oil on board
26 ⅛ x 22 ¼ in (66.4 x 56.5 cm)
Framed: 27 ½ x 23 ¾ x 1 ¾ in (69.8 x 60.3 x 4.4 cm)
(GL13181)
Galerie Lelong & Co., New York is pleased to present at the 2023 edition of the Independent 20th Century with a solo presentation of Mildred Thompson’s rarely seen Window Paintings.
Throughout a career spanning over four decades, Thompson worked in a variety of mediums— including paintings, sculptures, drawings, and prints—developing a distinctly unique language of abstraction defined by energetic mark-making, a profound understanding of color, and complex compositions that absorb the viewer. Dating to the late 1970s, the Window Paintings were made following the artist’s return to the United States after living and working for a time in Germany. Painted in Tampa, Florida, Thompson remarked that she was inspired by the bright colors of her new environment after being in the much harsher European winter climate for over a decade. Taking on a vibrant and bold palette, these works demonstrate Thompson’s signature approach to abstraction while embracing the pop colors of the ‘70s.
Thompson drew artistic inspiration from a variety of fields, notably the sciences. The intimately scaled Window Paintings stand in Thompson’s oeuvre as early depictions of light by the artist, who utilized a modernist visual language to interpret natural and cosmic phenomena, demonstrating her remarkable ability to artistically represent color found in the world around her.
Mildred Thompson was born in 1936 in Jacksonville, Florida, and died in 2003 in Atlanta, Georgia. She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree from Howard University in Washington, DC in
1957, under the tutelage and mentorship of the pioneering African American art historian James A. Porter. Recently her work has been included in significant group exhibitions including Magnetic Fields: Expanding American Abstraction, 1960s to Today, which traveled from the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri to the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC, and Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, Florida; The Dirty South: Contemporary Art, Material Culture and the Sonic Impulse, which traveled from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver, Colorado; and Duro Olowu: Seeing Chicago at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Illinois. In 2019, Spelman College Museum of Fine Art presented a solo exhibition of her work entitled Mildred Thompson: The Atlanta Years, 1986-2003. In 2018, her Wood Pictures were featured in a solo presentation, Mildred Thompson: Against the Grain, at the New Orleans Museum of Art, as well as in the 10th Berlin Biennale. Thompson’s work can be found in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC; New Orleans Museum of Art, Louisiana; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Virginia; Glenstone Museum, Potomac, Maryland; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge Massachusetts; and Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., among other institutions.