Bearden, Romare

Romare Bearden was born in Charlotte, North Carolina and at age 9, in 1911, he moved
to NY with family in Harlem. He was the son of Bessye Bearden, a prominent journalist
and the first black woman elected to the New York City School Board. In his youth,
Bearden experienced the heights of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, engaging with
Langston Hughes, Duke Ellington, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Paul Robeson. He graduated
from New York University in 1935 with a BS in Education. He received his formative art
training with the Berlin painter, George Grosz, a prominent member of the Dada
movement who had recently emigrated to New York and offered courses at the Arts
Students League. His first solo exhibition in New York was in 1940 at Studio 306.
Four years later, he had his first solo exhibit outside of New York was in 1944 at the G
Place gallery in Washington DC. He later served in the armed forces during WWII as part
of the Black 372nd Infantry Regiment. He was stationed in New York and other bases
throughout the country and worked on his paintings at night. In 1945, he was represented
by pioneer gallerist, Samuel M. Kootz, and exhibited his Passion of the Christ series,
where one of the works was quickly acquired by the Museum of Modern Art. Bearden’s
medium typically consisted of gouache, tempera, and watercolor on brown paper bags or
cardboard rather than heavy oils. His style leaned towards social realism but also Abstract
and Cubist techniques.
In 1963, Bearden co-founded Spiral, a collective of Black artists who met regularly to
discuss how their visual arts could directly contribute to the ongoing Civil Rights
Movement. He used his immense influence to mentor and advocate for younger minority
artists. He served as the first art director for the Harlem Cultural Council and co-founded
The Studio Museum in Harlem as well as the Cinque Gallery. In 1987, President Ronald
Reagan presented Bearden with the National Medal of Arts, the highest honor a visual
artist can receive in the US. He died in New York in 1988 at the age of seventy-six. His
wife, Nanette Bearden founded the Romare Bearden Foundation two years later.