Romare Howard Bearden (New York, North Carolina 1911 - 1988) | Watercolor.

Item Overview
Description: "Street Jazz" Watercolor on paper, circa 1960's.
Signed "Romare Bearden" at lower left.
Painting size, 17 x 23 inches. Frame size, 24 1/2 x 30 1/2 inches.
Provenance: Private collection of New York.
Condition reports: Great overall condition.

Biography from the Archives of askART

Biography photo for Romare Howard Bearden
Working in a modernist style, Romare Bearden, as a Black American, tried to express on canvas and collage the complexities and uniqueness of being a minority in American society. Many of his themes dealt with music. Another strong presence in many of Bearden's works is trains. Bearden felt that there was a commonality, or link between trains and their symbolic tie to life; he saw trains as communicating life's fluctuations and constant change. He also saw this in jazz, so in many of his works the viewer will see images of both trains and jazz.

Bearden's use of color was also unique. He was strongly affected by a trip he made to the Caribbean. Because he lived in such urban, "dirty" cities as New York, Bearden was overwhelmed by the rich, vivid, "clean" colors of the tropics. He soaked in these colors, and used them in his works to try and bring a little of that experience to his viewers back home in the city. Through all of Bearden's wide oeuvre, and all of his motivations for painting in a certain style, it all comes back to the same quote: "My intention is to reveal through pictorial complexities the life I know." Bearden succeeded in revealing those complexities, made possible by his knowledge of his own life experiences.

Bearden was highly praised critically, but this high praise was never matched by a high price for his work. Bearden never considered himself a black artist, either, although many wanted to pigeonhole him as such.

His tone was affectionate and celebratory, and subjects include many aspects of American life from that in New York City to Southern voodoo women that recalled experiences in his youth in rural North Carolina. During the 1960s he turned to collages dealing with the daily life of black people.

He was born in Charlotte, North Carolina and spent his youth in Harlem of New York City, where his father was very active in the New York arts scene. Bearden remembered having artists and musicians in the family home all the time, a presence that carried over into his own adult lifestyle. When he began to live on his own, it was his apartment that became the gathering place for artists and musicians. Bearden became a huge jazz and blues fanatic through this lifelong exposure, and he constantly incorporated his love of music into his art.

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