Collage and more: Harlem artist Romare Bearden

Romare Bearden One Night Stand
Originally uploaded by Vivrant Thang

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

Bearden was born in Charlotte, 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.

He completed his studies at New York University (NYU), graduating with a degree in science and education in 1935.

He studied under German artist George Grosz at the Art Students League in 1936 and 1937. At this time his paintings were often of scenes in the American South, and his style was strongly influenced by the Mexican muralists, especially Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco.

He worked as a case worker for the New York Department of Social Services. During World War II, Bearden joined the United States Army, serving from 1942 until 1945. He would return to Europe in 1950 to study philosophy at the Sorbonne under the auspices of the GI Bill.

During the 1960s civil rights movement, Bearden started to experiment again, this time with forms of collage.[11] After helping to found an artists 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.