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Bearden migrated with his parents from Mecklenburg N.C., to New York City around 1914. The segregation of Jim Crow laws choked blacks living in the south and the family decided to make the move. Blacks were vacating the south in droves many moving to Harlem and the area had a southern feel to it.
Growing up, Bearden spent time in Pittsburgh too where his grandmother operated a boardinghouse for steel workers. His southern roots combined with life in the steel city as well as in Harlem all figure in his work.
He was light-skinned and could easily have passed for white but refused to do so. He turned down an offer to pitch for the major-league Philadelphia Athletics in 1930 because management insisted, he pretend to be white.
To pay the bills Bearden worked for the New York City Department of Social Services for years as a social worker and drew and painted on nights and weekends.
He produced more than 2,000 works of art during his career including watercolors, oils, cartoons, murals as well as costume designs and book illustrations. A major medium for him was collage and like patchwork quilts he combined painting and magazine clippings with paper and fabric each piece having its own history and meaning to him.
Working with fragments from the past brought them into the present he said. His collages during the 1960s civil rights movement catapulted his work and fame.
“Painting and art cannot be taught. You can save time if someone tells you to put blue and yellow together to make green, but the essence of painting is a self-disciplined activity that you have to learn by yourself,” he said.
Bearden was also a songwriter and co-wrote the jazz classic “Seabreeze” recorded by Billy Eckstine and Dizzy Gillespie.
Later in life he spent a lot of time in the Caribbean and his work underwent a change. It became less about race and more about simply being human.
“Painting is the act of discovery and you’re constantly enlarging your horizon or finding yourself every time you paint,” he said.
On April 21, 2021, Swann Auction Galleries offered a selection of Bearden’s work on the block.
Here are some current values.
Romare Bearden
Color Lithograph; Before the First Whistle; 1973; signed and numbered; 22 inches by 18 inches; $6,500.
Etching and Aquatint; Tropical Flowers; signed, titled and numbered; circa 1971-72; 15 ½ inches by 21 inches; $6,750.
Oil Monotype on Wove Paper; Tenor Sermon; signed; 1979; 22 ½ inches by 30 inches; $9,375.
Color screenprint; Martin Luther King, Jr. – Mountain Top; 1968; 29 7/8 inches by 19 1/2 inches; $16,250.
Collage Mounted on Board; Girl in a Garden; signed in blue ink; 1972; 22 inches by14 inches; $185,000.
