Three Folk Musicians (Primary Title)
Romare Bearden, American, 1911 - 1988 (Artist)
Three Folk Musicians, like much of Bearden’s imagery in his collage work, re-creates an ordinary scene of African American life. The artist blends a wide range of Black cultural moments, from the personal to the collective, with a modernist aesthetic that fragments and abstracts. Bearden's collage technique, constructing fractured forms out of cut-and-reassembled materials, results in flat and angular images.
In this composition, three musicians stand side by side, their different-sized features recall the polyrhythmic qualities of traditional African American music and visual art. This work pays homage to “the down-home music” of the African American South that has inspired so many visual and sonic artists.
Cordier & Ekstrom, New York, Romare Bearden: New Collages, October 10-November 4, 1967.
Traveled to J.L. Hudson Gallery, Detroit.
Museum of Modern Art, New York, Romare Bearden: The Prevalence of Ritual, March 25-June 7, 1971.
Traveled to National Collection of Fine Arts, Washington, DC; University Art Museum, Berkeley, CA; Pasadena Art Museum, Pasadena, CA; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; North Carolina Central University, Raleigh, NC; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY.
Smith Kramer Art Collections, Kansas City, MO, American Works on Paper, 1984-1985
Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY, Memory and Metaphor: The Art of Romare Bearden, 1940-1987, April 14-August 11, 1991.
Traveled to Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; Wright Gallery, University of California, Los Angeles, CA; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, The Art of Romare Bearden, September 14, 2003-January 4, 2004.
Traveled to San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA.
Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC, Romare Bearden: Southern Recollections, September 2011-January 8, 2012.
Smarthistory: Romare Bearden, Three Folk Musicians
4:04A conversation with Dr. Sarah Eckhardt, Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Dr. Leo Mazow, Louise B. and J. Harwood Cochrane Curator of American Art, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and Dr. Steven Zucker.
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