American; 1911-1988

“…Romare Bearden, one of the 20th century's first ‘collagists’, magnificently transmuted the collage medium into personal and universal statements of African American culture…”

ROMARE BEARDEN

Romare Bearden: Background/History

-Born in Charlotte, North Carolina. His family moved to Harlem, New York, at the zenith of the Harlem Renaissance, a Black cultural movement. Moved because of the “Great Migration” and oppressive Jim Crow Laws

-Although Bearden is best-known for his work in collage he achieved success in a staggering array of media, including watercolor, gouache, oil, painting, drawing, monotype, edition prints, photography, designs for record albums, costumes and stage sets, book illustration, and one known wood sculpture

-Bearden employed a variety of media to create his collage artwork, including cuttings from magazines, sample catalogs, wallpaper, art reproductions, and painted papers.

-Bearden preferred the improvisational nature of the collage medium and other influences around him. He carefully selected and accumulated images (photographs, magazine and newspaper clippings) which he kept in bags in his studio. Then he would choose those which most effectively completed his pieces. Aware of the Cubist movement's debt to African sculpture, he created faces inspired by African masks and sculpture

-Bearden’s collages are known for employing flat areas of color defined by cut papers as wells as more patterned or textured areas created by cuttings of preprinted images, hand- painted papers, foils, and fabrics. Surface manipulation was also an ongoing concern for the artist. Bearden was also well known for “juxtaposition of both negative and positive space.”

-A turning point in Bearden's career was his creation of “Projections”, enlarged photostatic copies of smaller collages.

Bearden's genre scenes from the early 1940s such as The Family permit interpretations that range from the secular to the religious. Forms comprising the man, woman, child, and other details of the composition reveal that Bearden already was concerned with abstraction over literal description.

“The Family” Romare Bearden, c. 1941gouache with ink and graphite on brown paper

“At Five in the Afternoon” 1946 - early cubist painting by Bearden

Bearden's inspiration for At Five in the Afternoon was the dramatic poem Lament for a Bullfighter by Spanish poet Frederico Garcia Lorca. For most of us, 5:00 in the afternoon signifies the end of a working day; but Romare Bearden chose the time as the climax of a bullfight in his painting. The figure of the bullfighter has merged with that of the bull so that it is difficult to see where one begins and the other ends. Bearden chose a style similar to "Synthetic Cubism," which was invented by Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso more than 40 years before At Five in the Afternoon was painted. Although Romare Bearden used paint instead of gluing paper to the canvas, his solid shapes appear to have been cut out of construction paper. Bearden chose bright colors to convey the drama and intensity of the moment.

“Jazz Grand Terrace” - – Romare Bearden

1964-Photomontage

“Pittsburgh Memory” – Romare Bearden

1964-PhotomontageBearden said: “In most instances in creating a picture, I use many disparate elements to form a figure, or part of a background....I feel that when some photographic detail, such as a hand or an eye, is taken out of its original context and is fractured and integrated into a different space and form configuration,

it acquires a plastic quality it did not have in the original....”

“Return of the Prodigal Son” – Romare Bearden, 1967

“Jazz Village" mixed media and collage on board, 1967 (30 x 40 in)

“Gospel Song” – Romare Bearden1969 – mixed media collage

“Tomorrow I May Be Far Away”, Romare Bearden, 1966/1967

collage of various papers with charcoal and graphite on canvas

Romare Bearden, Mother and Child, 1971 lithograph

“The Street” – Romare Bearden1977 – Black Felt Tip Pen Drawing This drawing was reproduced in the New

York Times on April 8, 1977

“Magic Garden” – Romare Bearden1978 – mixed media collage