Frieze Magazine’s Ten Best Shows in the UK and Ireland of 2025
EXHIBITION NEWS
Frieze Magazine’s Ten Best Shows in the UK and Ireland of 2025
December 2025
”Amid this year’s mixed bag of Frieze Week exhibitions, it was a single room of paintings by the late Bob Thompson that resuscitated my belief in art’s capacity to express something exuberant and sincerely felt, rather than hastily conceived or duplicitous. As I wrote in my October Critic’s Guide: ‘‘Measure of My Song’ will be a delight for painters, uniting six energetic works: four on canvas, one on board, and another on a concertina of what appear to be cabinet doors. He was an exceptional colourist – look at the purple that seeps through the eyehole of the white, mask-like face of the dog-like creature in Inferno (1963). Even 60 years on, these exquisite works remain among the most thrilling things I’ve seen in weeks: refreshingly unbridled, uncalculated and impassioned.’
Image Courtesy of Private Collection and Maximillian William © Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, NY. Photo: Ben Westoby / Fine Art Documentation
RELATED NEWS
ArtReview article on Bob Thompson: Measure of My Song.