Romare Bearden’s Rarely Seen Abstract Side
THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Roberta Smith
An unfamiliar side of the work of the great American modernist Romare Bearden is the subject of an exceptional exhibition on view (by appointment) and online at DC Moore Gallery: the improvisational abstract paintings he made from 1958 to around 1962.
Bearden (1911-88) is best known for his indelible figurative collage depictions of African-American life in all its quotidian richness, strength and struggle. These efforts, arguably his greatest, even took some artistic revenge. Made of fragments of cutup magazine images, their angular figures and faces in particular pushed Cubism back toward its primary source, African sculpture. They were both formally innovative and fraught with the signal event of their era: the civil rights movement. [More]
By Roberta Smith
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| Romare Bearden’s “Wine Star,” from 1959, on view (and online) at DC Moore Gallery.Credit...Romare Bearden Foundation; via DC Moore Gallery |