Romare Bearden: A Communicator of Culture

Romare Bearden - Untitled (from "Prevalence of Ritual" portfolio), 1974 - Color lithograph on paper- 36 x 29 1/4 in. (91.5 x 74.3 cm) - The Joseph H. Hirshhorn Bequest, Hirshhorn Museum - Washington, D.C. (click photo for larger image)Romare Bearden (1911-1988) was an American artists, whose collages of photographs and painted paper on canvas depict aspects of American black culture in a style derived from Cubism. He is considered one of the most important African American artists of the 20th century.  In "Pepper Jelly Lady" a figure in a dashingly patterned dress is framed by a wide border filled with drawings of Southern life: a plain wooden church, a porticoed mansion, a room with a potbellied stove.

A Cut Down History of Collage

Pablo Picasso's "Still Life With Chair Caning" (1912) Pablo Picasso (1881 - 1973) and Georges Braque ( 1882-1963) “coined the term 'collage' (from the French verb 'coller,' meaning 'to glue' or 'to stick') to describe works composed from pasted pieces of colored paper, newsprint, and fabric, considered at the time to be an audacious intermingling of high and low culture. It revolutionized modern art.”

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