$125,000
Estimate: $20,000 - $30,000
American Art & Pennsylvania Impressionists
Auction: December 8, 2019 2:00:00 PM EDT
A set of twenty-three (23) watercolors on paper, including some with pencil, collage and mixed-media, all pencil signed
Largest [Church]: 11 1/8 x 9 1/4 in. (28.3 x 23.5cm)
Smallest [Fountain in Central Park]: 6 x 6 1/4 in. (15.2 x 15.8cm)
Executed in 1979.
Abstract Colors, Autumn in the Park
Black Face, Profile in Round
Church
Fountain in Central Park
Gloria
Graffiti
Guitar Collage
Lawn at Central Park
Little Girl Through Black Fence
Manhattan Island
Moon Over Manhattan
Skyline at Night with Black Sky
Skyline with Blue Sky and Dark Buildings
Skyline with Brooklyn Bridge
Skyline with Dark Blue Sky
Skyline with Red Dots
Skyline with Red Sky
Skyline with Subway
Skyline with Very Dark Blue Sky
Skyline with White Sky
Skyline with Yellow Sky
Tenements with Laundry
Water in Central Park
(23)
Provenance: Private Collection, New York, New York.
EXHIBITED:
"Romare Bearden: Narrations," Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, State University of New York, New York, September 22-December 29, 2002; and Flint Institute of Arts, Flint, Michigan, February 7-April 23, 2003; and Delaware Art Museum (First USA Riverfront Art Center), Wilmington, Delaware, May 22-July 20, 2003 (traveling exhibition).
LITERATURE:
Lucinda H. Gedeon et al., Romare Bearden: Narrations, Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, State University of New York, 2002, discussed p. 13 and illustrated pp. 22-26.
NOTE:
Infused with jazz and bursting with life, Romare Bearden's art encompasses a rich admiration for art history, a deeply personal portrayal of the African-American experience, and a unique fluency with materials and techniques all his own. Born in Charlotte, North Carolina in 1911, Bearden moved to New York City with his family at age three, where his parents' friends included Harlem Renaissance intellectuals and musicians like W.E.B. Du Bois, Duke Ellington and Langston Hughes. He was steeped in the New York jazz scene as a child, before moving to Pittsburgh as a teenager, all the while maintaining ties to the south with family visits in the summer. Bearden graduated with a math degree from New York University before studying painting at the Art Students League, and continuing at the Sorbonne in Paris on the GI Bill, where he met artists Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and Constantin Brancusi, among others. A true student of art history, Bearden read voraciously throughout his life and visited as many museums and galleries as he could, encountering art from all cultures and time periods.
Bearden began experimenting with collage in the 1960s at the same time he struggled with whether to work, as he put it, within the "African idiom," or in a more mainstream aesthetic. Unhappy with Abstract Expressionism's lack of an underlying philosophy, Bearden moved toward incorporating images from everyday life into his painting, drawing and printmaking techniques. His first widely recognized effort in this vein was a series he entitled "Projections," which earned him his first single-artist museum exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C. With "Projections," Bearden brought "high" and "low" art forms together, addressed urban and rural subject matter, and approached topics of the Civil Rights movement and his particular experiences within African-American culture. At the same time, this work is deeply inspired by the African sculpture, European painting and Chinese calligraphy of his studies.
The selection of works on offer here (Lots 88-93) span the artist's career and exemplify his varied and interesting style, illuminating Bearden's stated intention "to reveal through pictorial complexities the life I know." The pieces incorporate the various mediums he continually experimented with and interweaved as his style evolved, and address his fundamental themes of black family life, music, the female form and storytelling.
Romare Bearden was commissioned to paint New York Scenes by director John Cassavetes for the opening credits of the 1980 movie Gloria, a mafia crime story set in New York. The series of twenty-three watercolors incorporates different perspectives and experiences of the city, from looming skyscrapers to fountains in the park, to laundry hanging on lines between public housing apartment buildings, to a stained glass church window. While Bearden's city teems with life, only two scenes include figures, African-American faces that seem bound by the city itself, held within its structures, while also holding a place integral to its rhythm and dynamism. Within the New York Scenes, day turns to night and the seasons change, revealing a vibrant city filled with color and action, caught in the immediacy of Bearden's watercolor brush.