Carolina Blue

A distinguished artist, scholar, and cultural pioneer, Romare Bearden is a prime example of how the arts are changed and enhanced through a process of exchange. Born in Charlotte, North Carolina, Romare Bearden moved to New York as a toddler, where his family quickly became entrenched in the Harlem Renaissance. From then on, he remained a pivotal figure in New York’s myriad communities, working as a social worker and a teacher, and helping establish multiple important art councils and venues. Not one to stay still, he also traveled to Paris in 1950 to receive an education in art history from the Sorbonne.

Bearden used intercontinental, academic sensibilities and Northern, urban artistic instincts to tell the story of Southern, rural life. He spent many summers in North Carolina, where he learned as a mixed-race man the distinct difference between being perceived as White and being perceived as Black. These experiences were combined with inspiration from other forms of personal expression—like music, literature, and philosophy—to create the allegorical, fragmented collages he is known for today.