Click here to view the Romane Bearden Exhibit

Read Press Release

Get Teaching Materials

Born in Charlotte in 1911, the son of college-educated parents who left North Carolina for Harlem when he was four,

Bopping at Birdland, 1979 Lithograph From the Jazz Series Courtesy of Jerald Melberg Gallery © Romare Bearden Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Bearden spent his formative years in the nexus of the Harlem Renaissance.  His home was the gathering place for such artistic and intellectual giants as “Duke” Ellington, “Fats” Waller, Langston Hughes and Paul Robeson, hosted by a mother who was the New York correspondent of The Chicago Defender, an African American newspaper of the time.  Surrounded by so many stimulating intellects, a young man might naturally follow in the path of any one of them. What distinguishes Bearden is that he pursued virtually all of them.

Except for short stays with grandparents in Pittsburgh and Charlotte, and seven months in Paris studying the Old Masters on the GI Bill, Bearden spent his entire life in New York City and became a force for both social change and the artistic recognition of African American art.

There seemed to be no limit to his interests and abilities.  He received a degree in education from New York University, wrote and published articles on numerous topics and created political cartoons. He designed costumes and sets for prominent dance and theater companies, illustrated books by influential authors, co-wrote books about African American art and culture and composed songs.  He was even offered an opportunity to play professional baseball for the Philadelphia Athletics, if he would only agree to “pass as white”—an offer he refused.

Circe into Swine, 1979 Screenprint Private Collection © Romare Bearden Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Social consciousness was the other driving force in his life.  In fact, while creating his art, Bearden also worked full time as a social worker until age 63. He was also one of the founders of Spiral, a group of artists actively engaged in the civil rights movement that focused on the “role of the artist in social change and whether or not race was an essential determinant in aesthetic sensibilities.” ¹

In the 20th century, collage became prevalent as a fine art medium with the iconic images of Picasso and Braque. Bearden studied their works, but he was interested in a different kind of utilization of the mid-century explosion of media images.   Collage was an appropriate medium to express the increasingly fractured and quick pace of life. 

Bearden layered parts of magazine images, newspaper photos, photocopies, drawn and painted papers that were cut and torn, and pictures of art from the past, including African masks. His skill as a draftsman, combined with unusual techniques such as scratching, abrading, sanding, or bleaching parts of a work, enlivened his images and contributed to the development of collage as a medium. Collage seemed particularly appropriate to his subject matter and to his themes.

Bearden was best known for the universal themes depicted in his collage paintings and prints. A well-read man whose

In the Garden, 1974 Screenprint 2 / 100 37 x 30 From the Prevalence of Ritual Suite Courtesy of Jerald Melberg Gallery © Romare Bearden Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

friends were other artists, writers, poets and jazz musicians, Bearden mined their worlds as well as his own for topics to explore. He took his imagery from both the everyday rituals of African American rural life in the south and urban life in the north, melding those American experiences with his personal experiences and with the themes of classical literature, religion, myth, music and daily human ritual.

Women played a significant part in his oeuvre. In the Garden (1974), a screenprint from the Prevalence of Ritual suite, depicts a woman in a striped dress, holding a bowl and standing in a fantastic garden of large plants that she does not bend down to tend. With a red sky behind her and a bird near her upheld hand, she may be one of the conjur women of spiritual powers who translated the knowledge of Africa to African Americans.

Bearden often added to the understanding of his images through his titles and use of classical compositions. Taking a fresh look at The Odyssey in Circe into Swine (1979), Bearden uses architectural forms to create the formal structure behind the figures. These flat, bold, colors isolate the Matisse-like graceful figures of Circe and Odysseus by placing them in front of a grey temple.

Jazz was the music, the great meeting place of cultures. Bopping at Birdland (1979), a lithograph from the Jazz suite, depicts a famous jazz club named after Charlie “Bird” Parker. In the bottom left corner of the print is the head of a musician and just behind him the sensuous sound of horn player can almost be heard wafting over the smokey atmosphere of the nightclub.

The Train, 1974 Etching & Aquatint 2 /5HC 18 x 22 ¼ Courtesy of Jerald Melberg Gallery © Romare Bearden Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

The Train (1974) represents an important metaphor for Bearden. In the south, African American neighborhoods were often near the train tracks. People went to the station to watch the trains go by. The trains represented an encroachment upon, and an escape from, their world.

Mecklenburg Evening II (1981), the only collage in the exhibit, indicates the textures, materials and methods that Bearden gracefully combined to create powerful images that were often translated into print media. This is the archetypical rural home, lamp lit to ward off the evening darkness, infused with familial connections. Three people are in a small room with two windows. The seated figures to the left are observing a younger woman who is leaning over a table with fabric on it, either sewing or ironing.  Their unusually large hands are indicative of manual labor and the enlarging effect it has on the human hand.

Honored by both Presidents Carter and Reagan, Bearden was an active member of a number of important organizations, including the NAACP and the National Institute of Arts and Letters.  In a comprehensive exhibit at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. in 2003-2004, curator Ruth Fine noted “One great legacy of Bearden’s art is its insight that what we share as a global community is equal in both interest and importance to what makes each of us unique.” ²

Sophia Gevas
Director

1 Fine, Ruth, The Art of Romare Bearden, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2003, p.145.
2 Ibid, Flyleaf.