Romare Bearden
Romare Bearden's "Sunday After Sermon," 1969. Collage on cardboard. (Alamy)
A pioneer of Black art and celebrated collagist, Romare Bearden seamlessly blended images of African-American life in the urban and rural South with references to popular culture, religion, and Classical art and myth. His narratives focused primarily on Blackness: the body, the culture and abstract beauty. Bearden used his art as activism by advocating for Black artist and projecting real images of African American life in his collages to show Black humanity.
Bearden was born in Charlotte, North Carolina and raised in New York City and Pittsburgh. His father, Howard Bearden, was a pianist and his mother, Bessye Johnson Bearden, was a journalist and civic activist. In his teen years, Romare Bearden would encounter major figures of the Harlem Renaissance who would regularly meet with his family at home in New York. The influences of music, writing and activism would inform Bearden’s entire career.
In Tomorrow I May Be Far Away, Bearden reflects on his childhood memories of Mecklenburg County. A focus or elevation of the everyday becomes a frequent motif in many of his works.
