Romare Bearden is considered one of the most important American artists of the 20th century. He depicted aspects of Black culture in a Cubist style.
Who Was Romare Bearden?
Considered one of the most important American artists of the 20th century, Romare Bearden’s artwork depicted the African American culture and experience in creative and thought provoking ways. Born in North Carolina in 1911, Bearden spent much of his career in New York City. Virtually self-taught, his early works were realistic images, often with religious themes. He later transitioned to abstract and Cubist style paintings in oil and watercolor. He is best known for his photomontage compositions made from torn images of popular magazines and assembled into visually powerful statements on African American life.
Romare Bearden's Art and Style
The works of Romare Bearden’s cover a wide range of techniques, themes, and styles. In college, Bearden aspired to be a cartoonist, drawing for and then editing Boston College’s humor magazine in the early 1930s. He continued his cartooning after he moved to New York City to attend New York University. Studying for medical school, he graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in science.
Living in Harlem, he joined a Black artists group and became excited about modern art, particularly, Cubism, post-Impressionism and Surrealism. His paintings depicted scenes of the American South. Some works were more realistic and showed influence from Mexican muralists like Diego Rivera. Other works were done in the Cubist style with rich colors and simple forms. Like many budding artists, Bearden couldn’t make a living solely from his art. He juggled several jobs while taking advanced classes and occasionally drew cartoons for several African American publications including W.E.B. DuBois' The Crisis.
'The Passion of Christ'
After serving in World War II, Romare Bearden returned to his art, which displayed an increasing abstract style. In 1945 he exhibited a series of Cubist inspired watercolor and oil paintings titled The Passion of Christ. The series of 24 pieces is more a statement about the human condition then a depiction of biblical text. Between 1950 and 1952, he studied at the Sorbonne in Paris where he met Pablo Picasso. His later paintings showed influences of old masters such as Johannes Vermeer and Rembrandt as well as modern artists like Picasso and Henri Matisse. He also studied Chinese painting techniques and co-wrote a book on Chinese art.
Known For His Collages
Romare Bearden is perhaps best known for his collage and photomontage compositions, which he began creating in the mid-1960s. During this time, he felt he was struggling in his art between expressing his experiences as a Black man and the obscurity of abstract painting. For Bearden, abstraction wasn’t clear enough for him to tell his story. He felt his art was coming to a plateau, so he started to experiment again. Combining images from magazines and colored paper, he would work in other textures such as sandpaper, graphite and paint. Influenced by the Civil Rights movement, his work became more representational and socially conscious. Although his collage work shows influence of abstract art, it also shows signs of African American enslaved crafts, such as patch-work quilts, and the necessity of using whatever materials are available. Taking images from mainstream pictorial magazines such as Life and Look and Black magazines such as Ebony and Jet, Bearden crafted the African American experience in his works.
Bearden and the Harlem Renaissance
Bearden’s collage work has also been compared to jazz improvisation. Growing up during the Harlem Renaissance, he was exposed to many of the jazz greats. Duke Ellington was one of his first patrons. Bearden wrote songs for Billie Holiday and Dizzy Gillespie and later designed a record cover for Wynton Marsalis. In his collages, Bearden’s images reflect some of the elements of jazz with its interplay among the characters and improvisation of the materials used.
Though Romare Bearden was vastly prolific, he is not that widely recognized as a major American artist. The American art world possessed the same prejudices and segregation of society. Also, Bearden’s work is hard to categorize. But during this life and after, his exhibitions have received enthusiastic reviews and critical praise and he was recognized with multiple awards and honorary doctorates.
Early Life & Family
Born Sept 2, 1911, in Charlotte, North Carolina, Romare Bearden was the only child of Richard and Bessye Bearden. The family moved to New York City when he was a toddler. Bessye was a reporter for a leading Black newspaper and eventually become president of the Negro Women’s Democratic Association. The household was a gathering place for Harlem Renaissance luminaries such as W.E.B. DuBois, Langston Hughes and musician Duke Ellington.
Education
After graduating from high school in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he was living with his maternal grandmother, Bearden played a little semi-pro baseball in Boston. He returned to New York City to attend college, with plans to go to medical school. He majored in science at New York University and graduated with a bachelor’s degree. But while there, he worked on the school humor magazine as a cartoonist and in his senior became its editor. After college he joined a Black artist group and became excited about modern art, particularly Cubism, Futurism, post-Impressionism and Surrealism. He traveled to France to study at the Sorbonne.