Introduction / John A. Williams -- Romare Bearden / M. Bunch Washington -- Drawings and Paintings 1940-1971.
Romare Bearden is internationally recognized as the dean of Black American artists. But his art reaches out far beyond the confines of its basic sources in the so-called Black experience, beyond the sociological implications that lie within his imagery. His visual idiom involves montage and collage elements in combination with forms and styles that echo those of African sculpture, and is orchestrated by a deft manipulation of mass and volume. Haunting, lovely, sometimes disturbing but always profoundly felt, his images corqmunicate their power directly to the viewer. Their message is all the more immediate because of the artists great skill in fusing emotive imagery with unerring sophistication of technique. Beardens almost primitive paintings of the 1940s are stylized statements about Negro life, employing a simplicity of form and color that enhances their expressive power. This emotional force persists in his abstract works of the 1950s, reaching a peak in the highly charged, complex collages of the 1960s-compelling, immediate celebrations not only of Black anguish and survival but of the indomitable human spirit.