Romare Bearden was an American painter, who represented Harlem Renaissance and Outsider art (Art brut) movements. He worked with different types of media, including cartoons, oils and collages. Romare depicted jazz musicians, monumental subjects, nudes and mythological characters set against abstract, fragmented backgrounds. Bearden was also a celebrated humanist, as demonstrated by his lifelong support of young, emerging artists.
Background
Romare Bearden was born on September 2, 1911 in Charlotte, North Carolina, United States. He was a son of Bessye Johnson Bearden, a journalist and civic activist, and Richard Howard Bearden, who worked as a sanitation inspector for the New York Health Department and was a renowned storyteller as well as an accomplished pianist. Both Romare's paternal grandfather and great-grandfather did paintings and drawings. When Romare was three or four years old, the family moved to New York City. At that time, their household became a meeting place for artists, intellectuals, and political activists of the Harlem Renaissance.
Education
As a teenager, Bearden spent summers with his maternal grandmother in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she ran a boarding house serving steel mill workers. In 1929, Romare finished Peabody High School in Pennsylvania. At that time, he was not that interested in art and instead played semi-professional baseball.
Some time later, he enrolled at Lincoln University, Pennsylvania, where he developed an interest in art and cartooning. Later, Romare continued his studies at New York University, graduating in 1935. He also attended Boston University.
Since 1936 to 1937, he attended Art Students League of New York, where George Grosz was his mentor. During this time, to earn a living, Romare acted as a political cartoonist for African-American newspapers. In 1943, Bearden studied at Columbia University in New York City. Also, since 1950 to 1951, after military service during World War II, the painter attended Sorbonne University in Paris.
Bearden received several Honorary Doctorate degrees from different educational institutions, including Pratt Institute, New York (1973), Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh (1975), Maryland Institute of Art, Baltimore (1976), North Carolina Central University, Durham (1977) and Davidson College, North Carolina (1978).
Initially, in his early years, Romare held different positions in order to earn a living. While studying at Boston University, he served as an art director for "Beanpot", the university's student humor magazine. Also, during his student years, Romare acted as a lead cartoonist and art editor for the Eucleian Society's (a secretive student society at New York University) monthly journal "The Medley".
Bearden's family was relatively financially sound, unlike most of his contemporaries, so he didn't qualify for the Works Progress Administration federal art patronage programs and continued to work on his art, while juggling several jobs. His success as an artist was recognized with his first solo exhibition in Harlem in 1940 and his first solo show in Washington, D.C., in 1944.
Since 1942 to 1945, the artist served as an army sergeant in the United States Armed Services. After military service, Bearden joined the Samuel Kootz Gallery, an avant-garde commercial gallery in New York, where he produced paintings in "an expressionistic, linear, semi-abstract style". In 1947, Bearden was one of only four African-American artists, who had a solo exhibition in midtown Manhattan blue-chip galleries. By the following year, Romare was among the most discussed American modernists and had exhibited several times at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
In the early 1950's, Romare traveled throughout Europe, visiting Picasso and other artists. During his time in France, Bearden also formed important bonds with such key intellectuals, as the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. In the late 1950's, Bearden's work became more abstract, using layers of oil paint to produce muted, hidden effects. During that time, he also examined famous European paintings he admired, particularly the work of the Dutch artists, such as Johannes Vermeer, Pieter de Hooch and Rembrandt.
Upon his arrival to New York City, the painter abandoned painting and started to make music. He was fond of jazz and made several jazz tunes. Also, Romare co-wrote the hit song "Sea Breeze," which Dizzy Gillespie recorded. In 1963, together with Charles Alston and Norman Lewis, Romare established the Spiral Group, an African-American artists' collective.
The same year, in 1963, Bearden returned to collage and photomontage. Initially, he created his collages by combining images, cut out from magazines and colored paper. Bearden would then enlarge these collages through the photostat process. After a successful exhibition of his photostat pieces at the Cordier and Ekstrom Gallery in 1964, Bearden was invited to hold a solo exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., which increased his public profile. Romare's collage techniques changed over the years and in his later works, he used blown-up photostat photographic images, silk-screened, colored paper and billboard pieces in order to create large collages on canvas and fiberboard.
In 1964, Romare was appointed a director of Harlem Cultural Council (African-American advocacy group). In the late 1960's, Bearden was one of the founders of the Cinque Gallery of New York in part to protest the Metropolitan Museum of Art's infamous exhibition "Harlem on My Mind" (1969), which didn't allow African-American artists to contribute their works.
The 1970's, marked a succsessful and productive period for the artist. In 1971, he was given a retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. Also, together with his wife, Nanette Bearden, he spent a great deal of time on the Caribbean island of St. Martin, where Nanette's ancestors had lived. At this time, Caribbean influences and images asserted themselves in his work, as he intensely studied the customs and spirituality, brought over from Africa during the slave trade. Later, his works took on musical themes, from the urban blues of Kansas City and Harlem nightclubs, to the blues and church music of Mecklenburg, North Carolina.
By 1982, Romare's health had deteriorated, but he continued to work until his death. In 1986, Bearden was commissioned by the Detroit Institute of Arts to produce a work to celebrate their centennial. He executed a mosaic mural, done in mosaic glass and titled "Quilting Time". The work is typical of Bearden in that it is rooted in his memories of his Southern childhood and depicts an important aspect of African-American culture. The brightly colored mosaic shows a group of women, making a quilt.
An innovative artist with diverse interests, Bearden also designed costumes and sets for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, as well as programs, sets and designs for Nanette Bearden's Contemporary Dance Theatre.
Bearden's art has survived him well. The largest retrospective of his works was organized by the National Gallery of Art in 2003. The exhibit included a comprehensive collection of his art, from his most famous collages and photomontages to his lesser-known watercolor, gouache and oil paintings, illustrations and his only known sculpture.
Romare Bearden gained prominence for his collages and photomontages. He was known as a co-founder of The Studio Museum in Harlem, Spiral Group and the Cinque Gallery. During his lifetime, he received many awards, including Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (1970), Ford Foundation Fellowship (1973), Gold Medal for Achievement in the Arts (1976), National Medal of Arts (1987) and others.
In 1980, President Jimmy Carter hosted a White House reception for the artist. Also, both the National Urban League and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) awarded him great honors. In 1990, the Romare Bearden Foundation was established to promote his work and to support African American artists.
In 2000, his collage "Family" (1988), became the national poster for the United States Census Bureau’s 2000 Census.
Bearden's works are kept in important public collections of different museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and others.
The Return of Odysseus (Homage to Pintoricchio and Benin)
Spring Way
Clockwise series, 1979-1984
Battle with Cicones
The Uncoupling of the Hounds
The Block (detail)
Prevalence of Ritual III
The Family
Untitled
Untitled
Calm Sea
Untitled
At the Clef Club (Piano Player)
Pittsburgh Memory
Untitled
Two, But Not Two
Bessie, Duke, and Louis
Carolina Morning
Family (mother and child)
Out Chorus
Untitled
Pepper Jelly Lady
Profile.Part I, The Twenties. Mecklenburg County, Sunset Limited
The Calabash
Politics
Romare supported the Civil Rights Movement and asserted African-American rights.
Views
Quotations:
"If you're any kind of artist, you make a miraculous journey, and you come back and make some statements in shapes and colors of where you were."
"You put down one color and it calls for an answer. You have to look at it like a melody."
"Artists have this desire for a vision of the world...There's some painting someplace that's not in a museum and it's your idea as a painter to put that one thing that is missing there."
"When I conjure these memories, they are of the present to me, because after all, the artist is a kind of enchanter in time."
"You should always respect what you are and your culture because if your art is going to mean anything, that is where it comes from."
"Practically all great artists accept the influence of others. But... the artist with vision sees his material, chooses, changes, and by integrating what he has learned with his own experiences, finally molds something distinctly personnel."
"Painting and art cannot be taught. You can save time if someone tells you to put blue and yellow together to make green, but the essence of painting is a self-disciplined activity that you have to learn by yourself."
Membership
Romare was a member of Harlem Artists Guild.
American Academy of Arts and Letters
,
United States
1966
associate member
National Academy of Design
,
United States
1978
founding member
Black Academy of Arts and Letters
,
United States
1970
Interests
Music, performing arts, history, literature
Connections
In 1954, Romare married Nanette Bearden, a dancer.
