Romare Bearden: Biography
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Romare Bearden working
in his studio
on the print, Firebirds, early 1980’s.
Photograph by Frank Stewart
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Romare Howard Bearden was born
on September 2, 1911, to (Richard) Howard and Bessye Bearden in
Charlotte, North Carolina, and died in New York City on March 12, 1988,
at the age of 76. His life and art are marked by exceptional talent
encompassing a broad range of intellectual and scholarly interests,
including music, performing arts, history, literature, and world art.
Bearden was also a celebrated humanist, as demonstrated by his lifelong
support of young, emerging artists.
Romare Bearden began college at
Lincoln University, transferred to Boston University and completed his
studies at New York University (NYU), graduating with a degree in
education. While at NYU, Bearden took extensive courses in art and was
a lead cartoonist and then art editor for the monthly journal The
Medley. He had also been art director of Beanpot, the
student humor magazine of Boston University. Bearden published many
journal covers during his university years and the first of numerous
texts he would write on social and artistic issues. He also attended
the Art Students League in New York and later, the Sorbonne in Paris.
In 1935, Bearden became a weekly editorial cartoonist for the Baltimore
Afro-American, which he continued doing until 1937.
After joining the Harlem Artists
Guild, Bearden embarked on his lifelong study of art, gathering
inspiration from Western masters ranging from Duccio, Giotto and de
Hooch to Cezanne, Picasso and Matisse, as well as from African art
(particularly sculpture, masks and textiles), Byzantine mosaics,
Japanese prints and Chinese landscape paintings.
From the mid-1930s through 1960s, Bearden was a social worker with the
New York City Department of Social Services, working on his art at
night and on weekends. His success as an artist was recognized with his
first solo exhibition in Harlem in 1940 and his first solo show in
Washington, DC, in 1944. Bearden was a prolific artist whose works were
exhibited during his lifetime throughout the United States and Europe.
His collages, watercolors, oils, photomontages and prints are imbued
with visual metaphors from his past in Mecklenburg County, North
Carolina, Pittsburgh and Harlem and from a variety of historical,
literary and musical sources.
In 1954, Bearden married Nanette
Rohan, with whom he spent the rest of his life. In the early 1970s, he
and Nanette established a second residence on the Caribbean island of
St. Martin, his wife's ancestral home, and some of his later work
reflected the island's lush land-scopes. Among his many friends,
Bearden had close associations with such distinguished artists,
intellectuals and musicians as James Baldwin, Stuart Davis, Duke
Ellington, Langston Hughes, Ralph Ellison, Joan Miró, George
Grosz, Alvin Ailey and Jacob Lawrence.
Bearden was also a respected writer and an eloquent spokesman on
artistic and social issues of the day. Active in many arts
organizations, in 1964 Bearden was appointed the first art director of
the newly established Harlem Cultural Council, a prominent
African-American advocacy group. He was involved in founding several
important art venues, such as The Studio Museum in Harlem and the
Cinque Gallery. Initially funded by the Ford Foundation, Bearden and
the artists Norman Lewis and Ernest Crichlow established Cinque to
support younger minority artists. Bearden was also one of the founding
members of the Black Academy of Arts and Letters in 1970 and was
elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1972.
Recognized as one of the most creative and original visual artists of
the twentieth century, Romare Bearden had a prolific and distinguished
career. He experimented with many different mediums and artistic
styles, but is best known for his richly textured collages, two of
which appeared on the covers of Fortune and Time magazines,
in 1968. An innovative artist with diverse interests, Bearden also
designed costumes and sets for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater,
and programs, sets and designs for Nanette Bearden's Contemporary Dance
Theatre.
Among Bearden's numerous publications are: A
History of African American Artists: From 1792 to the Present,
which was coauthored with Harry Henderson and published posthumously in
1993; The Caribbean Poetry of Derek Walcott and the Art of Romare
Bearden (1983); Six Black Masters of American Art,
coauthored with Harry Henderson (1972); The Painter's Mind: A
Study of the Relations of Structure and Space in Painting,
coauthored with Carl Holty (1969); and Li'l Dan, the Drummer Boy:
A Civil War Story, a children's book published posthumously in
September 2003.
Bearden's work is included in many important public collections
including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of
American Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts,
Boston and The Studio Museum in Harlem, among others. He has had
retrospectives at the Mint Museum of Art (1980), the Detroit Institute
of the Arts (1986), as well as numerous posthumous retrospectives,
including The Studio Museum in Harlem (1991) and the National Gallery
of Art, Washington, DC (2003).
Bearden was the recipient of many awards and honors throughout his
lifetime. Honorary doctorates were given by Pratt Institute, Carnegie
Mellon University, Davidson College and Atlanta University, to name but
a few. He received the Mayor's Award of Honor for Art and Culture in
New York City in 1984 and the National Medal of Arts, presented by
President Ronald Reagan, in 1987.
Copyright®.
2005 Romare Bearden Foundation
More information about Romare Bearden can be
found on the Romare Bearden Foundation website
at: www.beardenfoundation.org
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