The Art of Romare Bearden

A Resource for Teachers

This packet is about an artist named Romare Bearden. It was put together by a place called the National Gallery of Art in Washington. Some companies helped pay for the art show. The art show traveled to five different museums in cities across the country, one after another.

Teachers, artists, and writers worked together to make this packet. They found pictures, wrote text, and designed the pages so classes could use it.

Cover picture: Tomorrow I May Be Far Away. Bearden made it by gluing paper cutouts onto canvas, then adding charcoal and pencil marks. A collage is art made by gluing pieces of paper or other materials together.

What Students Will Learn

This packet helps students learn these things about Romare Bearden:

• Bearden made art about his own memories, about Black history in America, and about books he loved. He showed Black life in ways that everyone could understand and connect with.
• Many things shaped his style: art from Europe, sculpture from Africa, other artists from America and Mexico, and music—especially blues and jazz.
• Bearden is most famous for his collages. He made them in new and clever ways. He also painted with watercolor, gouache (a thick kind of paint), and oil. He made prints, monotypes (one-of-a-kind prints), murals (big wall paintings), and even one sculpture.
• Bearden helped other artists of color get noticed and supported.

How to Use This Packet

This packet has slides, color pictures, and a music CD.

• The slides go in the same order as the text.
• The color pictures can be put up in the classroom.
• There is also a CD of music that goes with the music section of this packet.

Table of Contents

The packet is organized into these parts:

• Bearden at a Glance
• Biography (the story of his life)
• Memories (places he lived: North Carolina, Pittsburgh, Harlem, Paris, the Caribbean)
• A Leader in the Arts Community
• Music
• Art and Books That Inspired Him
• Method (how he made his art)
• A note from artist to artist
• Lists of slides, pictures, and other resources

Bearden at a Glance

Meet Romare Bearden. He was tall—almost six feet—and had a strong, solid build. His friends called him "Romie." After he finished college, he worked as a social worker. Later, from the mid-1960s until he died in 1988, he became one of the most important artists in the United States.

Bearden once said the artist is like a whale swimming with its mouth open, taking in everything it needs. Once the whale has enough, it can choose what matters most. That's when it really starts to grow.

Bearden grew up in a home where famous Harlem writers, like the poet Langston Hughes, often visited. So it's no surprise that as an adult, Bearden loved to read—poetry, philosophy, politics, myths, religion, art, and old books. He also read newer writers, including some of his own friends, like Richard Wright, James Baldwin, and Albert Murray.

Bearden loved cats! He had four: Gypo, Tuttle (named after an Egyptian king), Rusty (named after a hero from Persian stories), and Mikie (named after the famous artist Michelangelo).

Bearden's art is special because it connects Black life and history to feelings and experiences that all people share. That is what makes his work so important.

Bearden didn't just read books—he wrote them too! He wrote reviews of art shows, articles about how he made his art, and three whole books about art. One of them, about Black artists in America, was published after he died.

Jazz and blues music gave Bearden many ideas for his art. Growing up, he heard blues music and jazz musicians like Duke Ellington's band, pianist Earl Hines, and singer Ella Fitzgerald. For sixteen years, his art studio was right above the Apollo Theater, a famous music venue in Harlem.

Bearden's special way of making art was collage. He cut pieces from magazines, painted paper, foil, posters, and pictures of other art. These pieces were like his "paints." His collages broke up space and shapes in a new way. One writer called his style "patchwork cubism" (cubism is a style of art that shows shapes in broken-up, unusual ways).

Places Bearden Painted

• Rural North Carolina — where he was born and visited many times later in life.
• Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania — a steel-making town where he spent summers and one year of high school. This is where he first started drawing.
• Harlem, New York City — the center of Black culture, where he moved as a small child.
• St. Martin, in the Caribbean — an island where he lived and worked part of each year once he was older.

Subjects Bearden Painted

• African-American life and traditions
• Stories from religion, history, books, and myths
• Blues singers and jazz musicians

Other Things Bearden Made

• Pictures for books
• Covers for music records
• Sets and costumes for the stage
• Big murals for public walls

Bearden cared deeply about making things fair for African-American artists. He didn't like the idea of treating Black artists differently or separately. But he also knew they didn't get the same chances as other artists. So he worked hard to help even things out.

He once wrote that as Black people, they could not ignore the unfairness of segregation (the unfair separating of people by race).

Ways Bearden Made Art

• Watercolor paint
• Gouache paint
• Collage
• Collage copied and enlarged in black and white
• Prints
• Monotypes (one-of-a-kind prints)
• Oil paint
• One sculpture!

Look For These in His Art

Trains, spirit figures, small country houses, city row houses and front steps, big hands, birds, musicians, windows, hills, African sculpture, smokestacks, the sun and moon, cats, and roosters.

Biography

Romare Bearden (1911–1988)

Romare Bearden was born in Charlotte, North Carolina, on September 2, 1911. He grew up in a comfortable Black family. Both of his parents, Bessye and Howard, had gone to college. Everyone expected Romare would do well in life.

Around 1914, his family moved north, joining many other Black families leaving the South at that time. This movement was called the Great Migration. Back then, unfair laws called Jim Crow laws stopped many Black people from voting. These laws also kept them from having the same access to jobs, schools, doctors, businesses, and land as white people. Like many Black families from the South, the Beardens moved to Harlem, a neighborhood in New York City. Romare would call New York his home for the rest of his life.

In the 1920s, Harlem was full of exciting art, ideas, and culture. It was the heart of African-American culture at that time. Romare's mother worked as the New York editor for a popular Black newspaper called the Chicago Defender. She became an important person in Harlem's social and political life. Famous people—like musician Duke Ellington and poet Langston Hughes—often visited the Bearden home. Meeting these talented people probably helped spark Romare's lifelong love of music and books.

Bearden once said that people he had known long ago seemed to appear again in his art, like the mind bringing back clear memories. He said we don't always choose these feelings—they are just there. He believed there are hidden paths inside all of us that we travel as we connect with others.

As a child, Bearden often left Harlem to spend time with relatives in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, and P—