 |
Romare Bearden
African-American artist Romare Bearden (1911-88) was one of Wilson's "Four B's," his nickname for some of his major influences, who also included along writer Amiri Baraka, the blues, and writer Jorge Luis Borges. "From Romare Bearden I learned that the fullness and richness of everyday ritual life can be rendered without compromise or sentimentality," Wilson said. The late playwright found the inspiration to write Joe Turner's Come and Gone and The Piano Lesson in the found objects and inked and painted papers of Bearden's collages Mill Hand's Lunch Bucket (1978) and Piano Lesson (1983).
Bearden was born in Charlotte, North Carolina, raised in Harlem, and spent two high school years in Pittsburgh. He used his canvas to communicate the African-American experience. "My intention is to reveal through pictorial complexities the richness of a life I know," he said. His influences included African masks, Paul Cézanne, Chinese landscape paintings, Japanese prints, Jacob Lawrence, and Joan Miró. "I think the artist has to be something like a whale, swimming with its mouth open and absorbing everything until it has what it needs," Bearden said. He completed no less than 2,000 collages, costume designs for the theater, illustrations, murals, prints, and watercolors.
[back to top]
|
|
