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Welcome to the official website of The Romare Bearden Foundation. This site offers a wide range of resources and information on the art and life of preeminent African-American artist Romare Bearden.
Please explore our website, sign our e-mail list and learn about who we are and how you can support us. We invite you to visit this site often to learn more about Romare Bearden, one of America's foremost artists. Enjoy!

Photo by Marvin Newman.
Romare Howard Bearden (1911-1988). Recognized as one of the most creative and original visual artists of the twentieth century, the artist had a prolific and distinguished career.

The Romare Bearden Foundation was established as a nonprofit organization by the estate of Romare Bearden in 1990, two years after the artist died.
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In the news
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06 Apr
CINQUE ARTIST PROGRAM AT THE HARLEM SCHOOL OF THE ARTS: ARTIST TALK WITH CARLOS JESUS MARTINEZ DOMINGUEZ
Read moreTuesday, April 17, 2017 6:00 pm-8:00 pm visual artist Carlos Jesus Martinez Dominguez will present his multimedia work and thoughts on the Caribbean, its diaspora,
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30 Dec
Cinque Artists Program at the Harlem School of Arts : Artist Talk with Xaviera Simmons
Read moreThe Cinque Artist series promotes presentations from professionals, practical information, and platforms for artist to showcase their work. We encourage adult artists, students and enthusiasts
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21 Dec
Romare Bearden Foundation honored by Neuberger Museum of Art
Read moreIn conjunction with the exhibition “Romare Bearden: Abstraction” on view at the Neuberger Museum of Art, the Bearden Foundation will be among the honorees at
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18 Nov
“Reflections of Monk: Inspired images of Music and Moods III” Exhibition
Read moreIt is the last chance show closing, featuring two Bearden works on Saturday, November 18, 2017 Wilmer Jenning Gallery Kenkeleba House 219 East 2nd Street,
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18 Nov
“Recollections” Bearden and Others Exhibition Closing November 18
Read moreEssie Green Galleries has been exhibiting and selling Bearden and other Black Masters since 1979. This show featured watercolor and collage with a focus on
Quotes
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I think the artist has to be something like a whale, swimming with his mouth open, absorbing everything until he has what he really needs. When he finds that, he can start to make limitations. And then he really begins to grow.
Romare Bearden -
I felt that the Negro was becoming too much of an abstraction, rather than the reality that art can give a subject.
Romare Bearden, 1964 -
As a Negro I do not need to go looking for happenings, the absurd or the surreal, because I have seen things that neither Dali, Beckett, Ionesco, nor any of the others could have thought possible.
Romare Bearden, 1967 -
It is not my aim to paint about the Negro in America in terms of propaganda. It is to depict the life of my people as I know it, passionately and dispassionately as Brueghel. My intention is to reveal through pictorial complexities the life I know.
Romare Bearden -
I do not burden myself with the need for complete abstraction or absolute formal purity but I do want my language to be strict and classical, in the manner of the great Benin heads, for example.
Romare Bearden, 1969 -
I paint out of the tradition of the blues.
Romare Bearden, 1980