Romare Bearden: painting, collages and the Black experience

Romare Bearden in the Hewitt Collection
Originally uploaded by trudeau

Romare Bearden (1911 – 1988) was an African American artist and writer. He worked in several media including cartoons, oils, and collage.

Bearden was born in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. His family moved him to New York City as a toddler, and their household soon became a meeting place for major figures of the Harlem Renaissance.[1] In 1929 he graduated from Peabody High School in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He completed his studies at New York University (NYU), graduating with a degree in science and education in 1935.

In the late 1950s, Bearden's work became more abstract, using layers of oil paint to produce muted, hidden effects. In 1956, Bearden began studying with a Chinese calligrapher, whom he credits with introducing him to new ideas about space and composition in painting. He also spent a lot of time studying famous European paintings he admired, particularly the work of the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer, Pieter de Hooch, and Rembrandt.

During the 1960s civil rights movement, Bearden started to experiment again, this time with forms of collage (Brenner Hinish and Moore, 2003). After helping to found an artist's group in support of civil rights, Bearden's work became more representational and more overtly socially conscious.

He used clippings from magazines, which in and of itself was a new medium as glossy magazines were fairly new. He used these glossy scraps to incorporate modernity in his works, trying to show how not only were African American rights moving forward, but so was his socially conscious art.

In 1964, he held an exhibition he called Projections, where he introduced his new collage style. These works were very well received, and these are generally considered to be his best work (Fine, 2004).