INTRODUCTION
The complex and colorful art of Romare Bearden (1911-1988) is autobiographical
and metaphorical. Rooted in the history of western, African, and
Asian art, as well as in literature and music, Bearden found his
primary motifs in personal experiences and the life of his community.
Born in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, Bearden moved as a toddler
to New York City, participating with his parents in the Great Migration
of African Americans to states both north and west. The Bearden home
became a meeting place for Harlem Renaissance luminaries including
writer Langston Hughes, painter Aaron Douglas, and musician Duke
Ellington, all of whom undoubtedly would have stimulated the young
artist's imagination.
Bearden maintained a lifelong interest in science
and mathematics, but his formal education was mainly in art, at
Boston University and New York University, from
which he graduated in 1935 with a degree in education. He also studied at New
York's Art Students League with the German immigrant painter George Grosz,
who reinforced Bearden's interest in art as a conveyor of humanistic
and political
concerns. In the mid-1930s Bearden published dozens of political cartoons in
journals and newspapers, including the Baltimore based Afro-American, but by
the end of the decade he had shifted the emphasis of his work to painting.
During a career lasting almost half a century Bearden produced approximately
two thousand works. Best known for his collages, he also completed paintings,
drawings, monotypes, and edition prints; murals for public spaces, record
album jackets, magazine and book illustrations, and costume and set
designs for theater
and ballet.
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