Art Fact Friday #3 August 11th 2023
- William Mandela Matthews
- Aug 11, 2023
- 2 min read
Romare Bearden born in Charlotte September 2, 1911 his talent, included a many intellectual and scholarly skills, music, performing arts, history, literature & world art. Bearden was also a celebrated humanist, with lifelong support of emerging artists. His diverse interests included designing costumes and sets for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater & Nanette Bearden's Contemporary Dance Theatre. He wrote "Sea Breeze", recorded by Billy Eckstine & Dizzy Gillespie a jazz classic. His contemporaries included, Stuart Davis, Duke Ellington, James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Joan Miró, George Grosz, & Jacob Lawrence.
He grew up in New York City & Pittsburgh & graduated from New York University,1935. Bearden supported his income as case worker for New York City. 1935-37 he was an editorial cartoonist for the Baltimore Afro-American. He joined the USArmy in 1942-45. He returned to the Samuel Kootz Gallery in New York. 1950, he studied philosophy & art history at the Sorbonne in Europe.
Early work depicts the American South influenced by Diego Rivera & José Clemente Orozco style. His creation Golgotha, in the series Passion of Jesus; reminiscent of cubism & examines emotions & reactions of viewers at the Crucifixion.
Bearden's moved more to abstraction & studied calligraphy & European masterpieces by Johnannes Vermeer, Pieter de Hooch & Rembrandt,1956. Bearden joined the Cordier & Ekstrom Gallery in New York,1961 he stayed until the end of career. Bearden was a founder of “Spiral”; with a commitment to the struggle of Negro artist for civil liberties. In 1964, he exhibited Projections, introducing his collage style; photostat print images cut from magazines & colored paper, which were altered with sandpaper, bleach, graphite & paint. His work served as cover of Fortune & Time magazines, in 1968.
Bearden exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. elevated his profile. In 1971, the Museum of Modern Art held a retrospective exhibition of his art traveling to the University Art Museum in Berkeley. He unveiled a 16 foot wide mural, 1973. The mural went to National Gallery of Art.
Bearden was a founding member of the Black Academy of Arts and Letters 1970 and elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1972. His retrospective moved to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art the, Dallas Museum of Art & the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2003. In 1984 He earned the Mayor's Award of Honor for Art and Culture, NYC and the National Medal of Arts, 1987.
Bearden died in New York City on March 12, 1988, due to complications from bone New York Times described Bearden las "one of America's pre-eminent artists" and "the nation's foremost collagist."
His created many publications including: The Painter's Mind: A Study of the Relations of Structure and Space in Painting 1969;Six Black Masters of American Art 1972; The Caribbean Poetry of Derek Walcott and the Art of Romare Bearden 1983; A History of African American Artists: From 1792 to the Present, posthumously, 1993; and Li'l Dan, the Drummer Boy: A Civil War Story posthumously 2003.
In 2008 his 1984 mural at Gateway Center subway station in Pittsburgh was estimated at $15 million.
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