Bearden, Romare Howard
1911-1988 · Contribution: 1964-1988
Pioneering collage artist whose layered, photomontage-based works became some of the most acclaimed depictions of African American life in 20th-century American art
Portraits are AI-generated interpretations, not photographs.
Impact on the world
Developed his celebrated collage technique in the mid-1960s, combining cut and torn images from mainstream magazines like Life and Look with Black publications such as Ebony and Jet to construct visually dense, narrative-rich depictions of Harlem and Southern Black life; his 1971 six-panel work 'The Block' and his 1964 'Projections' series are considered among the defining American artworks of the civil rights era, and he received the National Medal of Arts from President Reagan in 1987.
Life & background
Born in Charlotte, North Carolina to a journalist mother who became the first president of the Negro Women's Democratic Association and a pianist father, Bearden's family moved to Harlem during the Great Migration, where their apartment became a regular gathering place for figures including W.E.B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, Countee Cullen, Duke Ellington, and fellow artists Aaron Douglas and Charles Alston. After studying mathematics at New York University and briefly pursuing cartooning, Bearden studied at the Art Students League under German exile George Grosz, who he credited with helping him realize the artistic possibilities of depicting African American subject matter seriously. He served in the segregated 372nd Infantry Regiment during World War II, then worked as a New York City social caseworker to support his early painting career, moving through social realist and abstract expressionist phases before finding his definitive voice in collage during the politically charged mid-1960s. His collages, which he insisted on calling paintings made through collage technique rather than collages themselves, wove together childhood memories of the rural South, the rhythms of Harlem street life, and the structure of jazz improvisation; he died of bone cancer in 1988, and the Romare Bearden Foundation he established continues supporting emerging Black artists and scholars.
Sources
- Smithsonian American Art Museum; TheArtStory; Biography.com; Bowery Boys; Bearden Foundation
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