The paintings of Romare Bearden (1911–1988) represent a double triumph. At the same time that Bearden’s work reflects a lifelong commitment to perfecting the innovative painting techniques he pioneered, it also reveals an artist to explore the varieties of African-American experience.
By presenting scene, character, and atmosphere using a unique layered and fragmented style that combines elements of painting with elements of collage, Bearden suggested some of the ways in which commonplace subjects could be forced to undergo a metamorphosis when filtered through the techniques available to the resourceful artist. Bearden knew that resources and limitations of the form to which they have dedicated their creative energies.
But how did Bearden, so passionately dedicated to solving the more advanced problems of his painting technique, also succeed so well at portraying the realities of African-American life? During the Great Depression of the 1930’s, Bearden painted scenes of the hardships of the period; the work was powerful, the scenes grim and overall design, these colors also served as symbols of the psychological effects of debilitating social processes.
During the same period, he also painted happier scenes—depictions of religious ceremony, musical performance, and family life—and instilled them with the same vividness that he applied to his scenes of suffering. Bearden sought in his work to reveal in all its fullness a world long hidden by the clichés of sociology and the African-American experience, and in doing so reflected the multiple rhythms, textures, and mysteries of life.
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