After a 1998 retrospective at the Whitney Museum, the work of the Kentucky-born painter Bob Thompson wasn’t shown for over 20 years. Last year, the Colby College Museum of Art, in Waterville, Maine, put on an acclaimed Thompson exhibition; it then traveled to Atlanta’s High Museum of Art. Born in 1937, Thompson moved to New York City in 1958 and became an important presence in its jazz and literary scenes. He then traveled to Europe, where he studied compositions by the Old Masters—Piero della Francesca, Poussin, Goya—and integrated their lessons into his paintings. It was a heady visual synthesis, sophisticated and richly colored. Thompson died tragically young from a heroin overdose, in 1966, but his output during a short career was prolific. In this exhibition, his particular brand of figuration is the focus. —Elena Clavarino