Romare Howard Bearden (, ) (September 2, 1911 – March 12, 1988) was an American artist, author, and songwriter. He worked with many types of media including cartoons, oils, and collages. Born in Charlotte, North Carolina, Bearden grew up in New York City and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and graduated from New York University in 1935.
He began his artistic career creating scenes of the American South. Later, he worked to express the humanity he felt was lacking in the world after his experience in the US Army during World War II on the European front. He returned to Paris in 1950 and studied art history and philosophy at the Sorbonne.
Bearden's early work focused on unity and cooperation within the African-American community. After a period during the 1950s when he painted more abstractly, the theme re-emerged in his collage works of the 1960s. The New York Times described Bearden as "the nation's foremost collagist" in his 1988 obituary. Bearden became a founding member of the Harlem-based art group known as Spiral, formed to discuss the responsibility of the African-American artist in the civil rights movement.
Bearden was the author or coauthor of several books. He also was a songwriter, known as co-writer of the jazz classic "Sea Breeze", which was recorded by Billy Eckstine, a former high school classmate at Peabody High School, and Dizzy Gillespie. Bearden had long supported young, emerging artists and he and his wife established the Bearden Foundation to continue this work, as well as to support young scholars. In 1987, Bearden was awarded the National Medal of Arts.
Early life and education Bearden was born September 2, 1911, in Charlotte. Bearden and his family moved to New York City when he was a toddler, as part of the Great Migration. After enrolling in P.S. 5 in 1917, on 141 Street and Edgecombe Avenue in Harlem, he attended P.S. 139 and then DeWitt Clinton High School. In 1927 he moved to East Liberty, Pittsburgh with his grandparents and then returned to New York City. The Bearden household soon became a meeting place for major figures of the Harlem Renaissance. His father, R. Howard Bearden, was a grocer and pianist.West, Sandra L., Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance. United Kingdom, Facts On File, Incorporated, 2003. Romare's mother, Bessye Bearden née Banks, played an active role with the New York City Board of Education, and also was the founder and president of the Colored Women's Democratic League. She was a New York correspondent for The Chicago Defender, an African-American newspaper. Romare had Cherokee, Italian, and African ancestry. The Washington Post described him as "African American". His fair skin allowed him to cross boundaries which many other Black people were unable to access.
In 1929, Romare Bearden graduated from Peabody High School in Pittsburgh. He enrolled in Lincoln University, the nation's second oldest historically Black college, founded in 1854. He transferred to Boston University where he served as the art director for Beanpot, Boston University's student humor magazine. He continued his studies at New York University (NYU), where he started to focus more on his art and less on athletics, and became a lead cartoonist and art editor for The Medley, the monthly journal of the secretive Eucleian Society at NYU.Romare Bearden Foundation, 1990 Bearden studied art, education, science, and mathematics graduating with a degree in science and education in 1935.
Bearden continued his artistic study under German artist George Grosz at the Art Students League in 1936 and 1937. During this time he supported himself by working as a political cartoonist for African-American newspapers, including the Baltimore Afro-American, where he published a weekly cartoon from 1935 until 1937.
Semi-professional baseball career As a child, Bearden played baseball in empty lots in his neighborhood. He enjoyed sports, throwing discus for his high school track team and trying out for football. After his mother became the New York editor for the Chicago Defender, he did some writing for the paper, including some stories about baseball. But once Bearden transferred from Lincoln University to Boston University, he became the starting fullback for the school football team (1931-2) and then began pitching - first for the freshman team and eventually for the school's varsity baseball team. He was awarded a certificate of merit for his pitching at BU, which he hung with pride in subsequent homes throughout his life.
While at Boston University he played for the Boston Tigers, a semi-professional, all Black team based in the neighborhood of Roxbury. He tended to play with them during the BU baseball off-season and had opportunities to play both iconic Negro League and white baseball teams. For example, he pitched against Satchel Paige while playing for the Pittsburgh Crawfords for a summer, and played exhibition games against teams such as the House of David and the Kansas City Monarchs. When Philadelphia Athletics catcher, Mickey Cochrane, brought a number of teammates to play a game against BU, Bearden gave up only one hit—impressing Athletics owner Connie Mack. Mack offered Bearden a place on the Athletics fifteen years before Jackie Robinson became the first Black player in major league baseball. There are conflicting sources as to whether Mack thought Bearden was white or told Bearden he would have to pass for white. Despite the Athletics winning the World Series in 1929 and 1930, and the American League pennant in 1931, Bearden decided he did not want to hide his identity and chose not to play for the Athletics. After two summers with the Boston Tigers, an injury made him rethink the attention he was giving to baseball and he put greater focus into his art, instead.
Career as an artist
Bearden grew as an artist by exploring his life experiences. His early paintings were often of scenes in the American South, and his style was strongly influenced by the Mexican muralists, especially Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco. In 1935, Bearden became a case worker for the Harlem office of the New York City Department of Social Services. Throughout his career as an artist, Bearden worked as a case worker off and on to supplement his income. During World War II, Bearden joined the United States Army, serving from 1942 until 1945, largely in Europe.
After serving in the army, Bearden joined the Samuel Kootz Gallery, a commercial gallery in New York that featured avant-garde art. He produced paintings at this time in "an expressionistic, linear, semi-abstract style." He returned to Europe in 1950 to study philosophy with Gaston Bachelard and art history at the Sorbonne, under the auspices of the G.I. Bill. Bearden traveled throughout Europe, visiting Picasso and other artists.
Making major changes in his art, he started producing abstract representations of what he deemed as human, specifically scenes from the Passion of Jesus. He had evolved from what Edward Alden Jewell, a reviewer for the New York Times, called a "debilitating focus on Regionalist and ethnic concerns" to what became known as his stylistic approach, which participated in the post-war aims of avant-garde American art.Witkovsky 1989: 258 His works were exhibited at the Samuel M. Kootz gallery until it was deemed not abstract enough.
During Bearden's success in the gallery, however, he produced Golgotha, a painting from his series of the Passion of Jesus (see Figure 1). Golgotha is an abstract representation of the Crucifixion. The eye of the viewer is drawn to the middle of the image first, where Bearden has rendered Christ's body. The body parts are stylized into abstract geometric shapes, yet are still too realistic to be concretely abstract; this work has a feel of early Cubism. The body is in a central position and darkly contrasted with the highlighted crowds. The crowds of people are on the left and right, and are encapsulated within large spheres of bright colors of purple and indigo. The background of the painting is depicted in lighter jewel tones dissected with linear black ink. Bearden used these colors and contrasts because of the abstract influence of the time, but also for their meanings.
Bearden wanted to explore the emotions and actions of the crowds gathered around the Crucifixion. He worked hard to "depict myths in an attempt to convey universal human values and reactions."Witkovsky 1989: 260 According to Bearden, Christ's life, death, and resurrection are the greatest expressions of man's humanism, because of the idea of him that lived on through other men. It is why Bearden focuses on Christ's body first, to portray the idea of the myth, and then highlights the crowd, to show how the idea is passed on to men.
Bearden was focusing on the spiritual intent. He wanted to show ideas of humanism and thought that cannot be seen by the eye, but "must be digested by the mind".Witkovsky, 1989: 260 This is in accordance with his times, during which other noted artists created abstract representations of historically significant events, such as Robert Motherwell's commemoration of the Spanish Civil War, Jackson Pollock's investigation of Northwest Coast Indian art, Mark Rothko's and Barnett Newman's interpretations of Biblical stories, etc. Bearden depicted humanity through abstract expressionism after feeling he did not see it during the war. Bearden's work was less abstract than these other artists, and Sam Kootz's gallery ended its representation of him.
Bearden turned to music, co-writing the hit song "Sea Breeze", which was recorded by Billy Eckstine and Dizzy Gillespie. It is still considered a jazz classic.
In the late 1950s, Bearden's work became more abstract. He used layers of oil paint to produce muted, hidden effects. In 1956, Bearden began studying with a Chinese calligrapher, whom he credits with introducing him to new ideas about space and composition which he used in painting. He also spent much time studying famous European paintings he admired, particularly the work of the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer, Pieter de Hooch, and Rembrandt. He began exhibiting again in 1960. About this time he and his wife established a second home on the Caribbean island of St. Maarten. In 1961, Bearden joined the Cordier and Ekstrom Gallery in New York City, which would represent him for the rest of his career.
In the early 1960s in Harlem, Bearden was a founding member of the art group known as Spiral, formed "for the purpose of discussing the commitment of the Negro artist in the present struggle for civil liberties, and as a discussion group to consider common aesthetic problems." The first meeting was held in Bearden's studio on July 5, 1963, and was attended by Bearden, Hale Woodruff, Charles Alston, Norman Lewis, James Yeargans, Felrath Hines, Richard Mayhew, and William Pritchard. Woodruff was responsible for naming the group Spiral, suggesting the way in which the Archimedean spiral ascends upward as a symbol of progress. Over time the group expanded to include Merton Simpson, Emma Amos, Reginald Gammon, Alvin Hollingsworth, Calvin Douglas, Perry Ferguson, William Majors and Earle Miller. Stylistically the group ranged from Abstract Expressionists to social protest painters.