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Romare Bearden
1911–1988
Death placeNew York, New York, United States of America
BirthplaceCharlotte, North Carolina, United States of America
BiographyRomare
Bearden was born in North Carolina and moved to New York as a young boy in 1911
as part of the Great Migration, the exodus of African Americans from the South
to the city centers of the Midwest and Northeast. These childhood experiences
of the two poles of African American experience—the close-knit, rural
communities of the Black South and the rapidly growing enclaves in the urban
North—informed Bearden’s artistic perspective on contemporary African American
life.
Bearden first began painting in a social realist style as a student at the Arts Students League in New York in the 1930s, while also supporting himself as an illustrator for African American newspapers and magazines. His early work reflected everyday life in New York as well as his interests in music, literature, and religion. In 1942, following an extended trip to the South, Bearden began to directly address Black culture in his work, producing a series of gouaches on brown paper that featured African Americans attending church, playing music, and figuring in religious allegories.
In 1941 Bearden showed After Church and other works in the famed American Negro Art exhibition at the Downtown Gallery alongside paintings by Jacob Lawrence and Henry Ossawa Tanner. Soon after Bearden enlisted in the military, serving as a GI during World War II. Following the war he began to paint with watercolors, creating increasingly abstract work throughout the late 1940s and 1950s. Continuing to experiment with media, Bearden branched out into collage work in the 1960s, a medium that would preoccupy him for the remainder of his life. It was in his collages that Bearden most thoroughly exploited the creative tension between representational imagery and abstraction, producing hundreds of works that drew their subjects from history, music, literature, religion, politics, and most of all, the lived experiences of his community.
A central figure in Harlem’s artistic scene during the second half of the twentieth century, Bearden helped to found the Studio Museum there. Over a long career, Bearden exhibited his work widely and developed close friendships with intellectuals and artists ranging from James Baldwin to Alvin Ailey. Since his death in 1988, Romare Bearden has become known as one of the most significant African American artists of the 20th century.
Bearden first began painting in a social realist style as a student at the Arts Students League in New York in the 1930s, while also supporting himself as an illustrator for African American newspapers and magazines. His early work reflected everyday life in New York as well as his interests in music, literature, and religion. In 1942, following an extended trip to the South, Bearden began to directly address Black culture in his work, producing a series of gouaches on brown paper that featured African Americans attending church, playing music, and figuring in religious allegories.
In 1941 Bearden showed After Church and other works in the famed American Negro Art exhibition at the Downtown Gallery alongside paintings by Jacob Lawrence and Henry Ossawa Tanner. Soon after Bearden enlisted in the military, serving as a GI during World War II. Following the war he began to paint with watercolors, creating increasingly abstract work throughout the late 1940s and 1950s. Continuing to experiment with media, Bearden branched out into collage work in the 1960s, a medium that would preoccupy him for the remainder of his life. It was in his collages that Bearden most thoroughly exploited the creative tension between representational imagery and abstraction, producing hundreds of works that drew their subjects from history, music, literature, religion, politics, and most of all, the lived experiences of his community.
A central figure in Harlem’s artistic scene during the second half of the twentieth century, Bearden helped to found the Studio Museum there. Over a long career, Bearden exhibited his work widely and developed close friendships with intellectuals and artists ranging from James Baldwin to Alvin Ailey. Since his death in 1988, Romare Bearden has become known as one of the most significant African American artists of the 20th century.