Lincoln Glenn Gallery is excited to announce Elliott Thompson: Washington Color School Artist. The exhibition will be on view February 11 – March 11, with an opening reception scheduled for Saturday, February 11 from 6pm-8pm ET.
Elliott Thompson’s career as an artist spanned more than six decades but only from about 1965 to 1980 was he at the center of the art world. In that period, he was one of the painters clustered around Washington, D.C. who rejected the painterly forms of abstract expressionism. Instead, he preferred impersonal hard-edged shapes on monochromatic fields that reinforced the flatness of the picture surface. Thompson’s work at this time represents some of the finest examples of this style that flourished during the 1960s and 1970s.
After retiring from his government job as a financial officer in the Supply and Maintenance Agency of the U.S. Army, Thompson embarked on his art career. His studies began while working in Paris. At that time, he worked in an academic setting under André Lhote, creating still life and figurative works. Finding his own paths of exploration, Thompson began painting within a range of gray tones. Upon his retirement, Thompson returned to Washington, DC where he studied, then taught at the Corcoran School of Art. His works from 1967 until 1969 were abstractions in repetitious forms assembled on a grid and working in black and white. In 1971 he introduced color. The mature works of Elliott Thompson are focused on pattern and repetition. They have a flowing tranquility that can be compared to the emotional ranges of music, with the repeating patterns as the rhythm, and the color range that of the melodic voice of each instrument. Thompson's work has been exhibited with Gene Davis, Alma Thomas, Sam Gilliam, and other DC Color Field painters at important galleries including the Jefferson Place Gallery and the Barbara Fiedler Gallery as well as institutions such as The Corcoran Gallery of Art, The Ringling Museum of Art, and The Phillips Collection. His works are held by private and museum collections, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum. In 1974 The Corcoran Gallery of Art held a retrospective honoring the artistic contributions of Elliott Thompson.
For more information, please visit https://www.lincolnglenn.com/exhibitions/11-elliott-thompson/works/.
About Lincoln Glenn Gallery
Lincoln Glenn, LLC was founded in 2022, with a mission to present American art from the 19th century to the contemporary period. The gallery exhibits works from artists of the Hudson River School, American Impressionism, Ashcan School, and American Modernism, with a particular focus on Abstract Expressionism and Color Field painting. Lincoln Glenn wishes to revive the legacies and explore the careers of artists working between the 1950s and 1970s who made significant contributions to art history, but whose names may have been forgotten by time.
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