Particles, 1993 Fine Prints
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MILDRED THOMPSON 1935-2003
Mildred Thompson grew up in Jacksonville, Florida. Her formal art training began in 1953 when she entered Howard University in Washington, DC. There she found a mentor in James A. Porter, who was head of the Art Department during that time. He arranged for Thompson to receive a scholarship at the end of her junior year for summer study at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine and, after receiving her Bachelor of Art from Howard, Porter assisted Thompson in entering the Brooklyn Museum Art School on a Max Beckmann Scholarship. There she studied painting with Reuben Tam and sculpture with William King. She began to exhibit professionally and was accepted in the Art U.S.A. '58 exhibition in Madison Square Gardens. She also applied and was turned down for a Fulbright Scholarship. Feeling herself ready for study in Europe, Thompson decided to go there on her own. She worked to save money during the rest of the school year and, through Samella Lewis, got a summer teaching job at Florida A&M University. In this way she earned enough for steamship passage to Europe.
She turned once again to James Porter for advice about where in Europe she should study. He recommended Berlin or Hamburg, where Thompson, whose painting was already influenced by the German Expressionists, would be able to develop more fully in the field of graphics. Her trip to Germany was attended by good fortune. She had decided to study at the Fine Art Academy in Hamburg even though, at the time she arrived, she had not yet applied or been accepted there. Nor did she have any plans as to where she would live. A few private lessons were all she had to prepare herself for the German language. Nevertheless, armed with pluck, a strong portfolio and the help of some brand-new German friends, she found a room and was immediately accepted into the Academy.
At the Academy she learned etching, lithography and other printmaking media and, during her initial term, had her first solo show at a private gallery in Hamburg. At the end of her first year she received a Reemstra Stipendum, which paid for her living and school expenses. After three years at the Academy, Thompson was ready to begin her professional career in the United States and, in 1961, returned to New York City. The social and artistic acceptance Thompson had enjoyed in Germany, however, was not to be found even in that most cosmopolitan of American cities. She soon realized that because she was a black woman, she was refused the shows and gallery representation that her work deserved. Although she was able to work on her art in the States (she received scholarships to the MacDowell Colony for two successive years) she could not show or sell it. And so she returned to Germany, this time to Berlin, where she established herself and once again began exhibiting and selling her work.
After ten years in Germany with travels to southern Europe and Africa, Thompson returned to the U.S. in the mid-1970s. The social climate had changed somewhat for the better. Thompson was able to draw upon her own reserves of self-confidence and perseverance to overcome many of the obstacles she encountered She lived at first in Florida where she was named Artist-in-Residence for the City of Tampa. In 1977 she moved to Washington, DC where she was Artist-in-Residence at Howard University for the academic year 1977-78. In 1981 she returned to Europe, this time to Paris, where she opened a studio in the Rue de Parme. Thompson moved to Atlanta, Georgia in 1986, which was "home base" for the rest of her life. There she taught art and art history in several area colleges, including the Atlanta College of Art from 1990 to 1993. A talented writer, she was also an associate editor of the periodical Art Papers.
Her work is in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution, National Collection of Fine Arts in Washington, DC; the Museum of Modern Art, New York City, The Brooklyn Museum; American Federation of Arts in New York City and Howard University, among others. Her work is also in numerous corporate and private collections in the United States and Europe.
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Particles, 1993
Intaglio vitreograph on Somerset, Edition of 20
image size 30" x 24", paper size 40" x 30" $700*
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Wave Function IV, 1993
Intaglio vitreograph on Somerset, Edition of 20
image size 30" x 24", paper size 37" x 30" $600*
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Wave Function I, 1993
Intaglio vitreograph on Somerset, Edition of 15
image size 20" x 16", paper size 30" x 22.5" $500*
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Heliocentric I, 1993
Intaglio vitreograph on Somerset, Edition of 12
image size 30" x 24", paper size 40" x 30" $600*
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Heliocentric III, 1993
Intaglio vitreograph on Somerset, Edition of 20
image size 30" x 24", paper size 40" x 30" $700*
Mildred Thompson was a visiting artist to Littleton Studios on three occasions. During those times her art was influenced by astronomy, spiritualism and metaphysics. "My work has to do with the cosmos and how it affects us," she told Essence magazine in a May, 1990 feature article. Exploring the unseen in her work extended to the workings of the physical world as well as the spiritual one. The look of unseen waves of light (or perhaps sound) is Thompson's subject in her vitreographs.
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