Romare Bearden

Romare Bearden (1911-1988)

Bearden held diverse interests; he attended NYU for mathematics (B.S., 1935), trained under painter George Grosz at the Art Students League, and was a caseworker for the N.Y.C. Dept. of Social Services (1938-69). After WWII service, Bearden studied philosophy at the Sorbonne before returning to NYC to pursue music and art. Painting in a flattened naturalism that transitioned easily to collage, he produced works inspired by life in the rural South. He co-founded Spiral (1963), Studio Museum (1968), Cinque Gallery (1969), and the Black Academy of Arts and Letters (1970).

Important Source Material:

Fine, Ruth, ed. Romare Bearden, American Modernist. Washington: National Gallery of Art, 2011.

Hills, Patricia. “Cultural Legacies and the Transformation of the Cubist Collage Aesthetic by Romare Bearden, Jacob Lawrence, and other African American Artists.” In Studies in the History of Art, no. 71 (2011): 221-248.

Fine, Ruth, ed. The art of Romare Bearden. Washington: National Gallery of Art, 2003.

NHS