ROMARE BEARDEN

Romare Bearden (1911 – 1988) was an American artist, author, and songwriter. He worked with many types of media including cartoons, oils, and collages. Throughout his career as an artist, Bearden worked as a case worker off and on to supplement his income.

Bearden was born September 2, 1911, in Charlotte. Bearden and his family moved to New York City when he was a toddler, as part of the Great Migration. In 1927 he moved to East Liberty, Pittsburgh with his grandparents and then returned to New York City. The Bearden household soon became a meeting place for major figures of the Harlem Renaissance. He attended the DeWitt Clinton High School. Bearden studied under German artist George Grosz at the Art Students League in 1936 and 1937.

His early 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. During World War II, Bearden joined the United States Army, serving from 1942 until 1945, largely in Europe. He returned to Europe in 1950 to study philosophy with Gaston Bachelard and art history at the Sorbonne, under the auspices of the G.I. Bill. Bearden traveled throughout Europe, visiting Picasso and other artists.

Bearden turned to music, co-writing the hit song "Sea Breeze", which was recorded by Billy Eckstine and Dizzy Gillespie. It is still considered a jazz classic.

In the late 1950s, Bearden's work became more abstract. In 1961, Bearden joined the Cordier and Ekstrom Gallery in New York City, which would represent him for the rest of his career.

In the early 1960s in Harlem, Bearden was a founding member of the art group known as Spiral, formed "for the purpose of discussing the commitment of the Negro artist in the present struggle for civil liberties”. The first meeting was held in Bearden's studio in 1963, and was attended by Hale Woodruff, Charles Alston, Norman Lewis, among others. Over time the group expanded its membership. Stylistically the Spiral group ranged from Abstract Expressionists to social protest painters. Bearden, inspired by the Civil Rights movement, expressed representational and overtly socially conscious aspects in his works as well.

Bearden's collage work began in the mid-1960s. Bearden was invited to do a solo exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. This heightened his public profile. Bearden's collage techniques changed over the years, and in later pieces he would use a variety of media and techniques on canvas and fiberboard.

In 1970, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for Fine Arts. In 1971, the Museum of Modern Art held a retrospective exhibition of Bearden's work entitled the Prevalence of Ritual, an exhibition of his prints, entitled A Graphic Odyssey showing the work of the last fifteen years of his life; and the 2005 National Gallery of Art retrospective entitled The Art of Romare Bearden.

He had long supported young, emerging artists and he and his wife established the Bearden Foundation to continue this work, as well as to support young scholars. In 1987, Bearden was awarded the National Medal of Arts.

The New York Times described Bearden in its obituary as "one of America's pre-eminent artists" and "the nation's foremost collagist."