Born in Charlotte in 1912, Bearden spent his childhood and adolescence in New York City’s Harlem–at the time of the Harlem Renaissance–and in Pittsburgh, with summer visits to North Carolina relatives. Through his parents, he encountered Harlem’s leading civic and cultural figures, including the great musicians of the day. After serving in the U.S. Army from 1942-1945, Bearden studied philiophy at the Sorbonne in Paris under the GI Bill. In the 1960’s his involvement with the Spiral Group, formed by black artists active in the civil-rights movement, stimulated his interest in the pasted-paper techniques of of photomontage and collage.
tags: NC art, NC artist, North Carolina
Romare Bearden (, ROH-mə-ree) (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 reemerged 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. He 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.
