String Theory XI
Acrylic on vinyl
48 1/8 x 60 inches
1999
As Exhibited in:
Elevation from Within: The Study of Art at Historically Black Colleges and Universities, 2019–2024, TJC Gallery, Spartanburg, South Carolina, 2019; Richardson Family Art Museum, Wofford College, Spartanburg, South Carolina, 2021; Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee, 2022, Florida A&M University, Tallahassee, Florida, 2023, Morgan State University, Baltimore, Maryland, 2024
Mildred Jean Thompson’s paintings are often characterized by their complex compositions, bright color palettes, and energetic markings. Much of her visual language is drawn from the fields of science and sound, resulting in canvases replete with references to quantum physics, cosmology, theosophy, and jazz. Although she is considered a major figure in twentieth-century American abstraction, the majority of Thompson’s career was spent in self-exile in Germany due to the racial and gender discrimination she confronted as a black woman in the United States.
Born in Jacksonville, Florida, Thompson was encouraged by her parents and teachers to pursue her interest in art at the college level. She enrolled at Howard University in 1953 and studied under the revered artist and scholar James Porter, a pioneer in the field of African American art history. Porter’s guidance shaped Thompson’s early experiments with abstraction. After graduating from Howard in 1957 with degrees in painting, art history, and art education, Thompson applied, unsuccessfully, for a Fulbright fellowship in hopes of study and travel in Europe. Determined to fund her own way, Thompson taught a summer course in ceramics at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, an appointment facilitated by art department chair Samella Lewis. Lewis, like Porter, became a lifelong friend and mentor.
After extended travels abroad in the 1960s and 1970s, Thompson eventually returned to the United States and accepted a residency at her alma mater. During her teaching tenure at Howard, Thompson received criticism from peers who chastised her for not painting in a figurative style or referencing African subject matter and for having trained in Europe with white artists. In reflecting on this criticism, Thompson concluded: “I had spent long years trying to find out who I am and what my influences were and where they come from. It was perhaps because I had lived and studied with ‘whitey’ that I had learned to appreciate my Blackness.”
When the Atlanta-based magazine Art Papers appointed her an associate editor in 1985, Thompson settled in the city and started teaching at a handful of local institutions, including two HBCUs: Morehouse College and Spelman College.