This fall, The Mint Museum presents a major retrospective of the work of Romare Bearden (1911-1988), widely regarded as one of America's most pre-eminent African American artists and foremost collagists, as well as a noted writer and musician.

The exhibition Romare Bearden: Southern Recollections surveys 50 years of the artist's work, from his early abstract paintings to the influential collages that dominated his later body of work. Opening on the centennial of Bearden's birth, the exhibition will be on view at the Mint Museum Uptown (at Levine Center for the Arts, 500 South Tryon Street) from September 2, 2011 until January 8, 2012.

"Romare Bearden broke new ground with his innovative collages and left a powerful legacy to generations of American artists," said Curator of Contemporary Art and exhibition curator Carla Hanzal. "Given the long association between Bearden and the city of Charlotte, the Mint has a special interest in bringing this important career overview to the public."

A native of Mecklenburg, Bearden lived here until age four. Although his family settled in New York, the artist's brief childhood in the South and return visits to Charlotte made a noteworthy impact on his art.

This exhibition examines how the South served as a source of inspiration throughout his career, a theme which has not been explored previously.

Romare Bearden: Southern Recollections will include approximately 100 works of art drawn from The Mint Museum's extensive holdings, as well as national public and private collections.

The exhibition's loosely chronological structure traces critical themes in Bearden's work such as music, religion, social change, and family, particularly informed by an African-American experience.

One of his most famous series, Prevalence of Ritual, concentrated mostly on Southern African American life. Works like Baptism (1964) examined the changing nature of African Americans' rights. Illustrating the movement of water being poured onto the subject being baptized, Bearden conveyed the temporal flux of society during the civil rights movement.

Bearden returned to Mecklenburg County in the 1970s just as his career was beginning to gain momentum. This Southern homecoming proved bittersweet. Charlotte was undergoing urban renewal, and already traces of Bearden's past had been erased. This nostalgic experience imbued Bearden with a greater sense of urgency to both celebrate and eulogize a lost way of life, a theme that would inform his artwork for the remainder of his days.

A fully illustrated catalogue will accompany the exhibition with contributions by Mary Lee Corlett, Jae Emerling, Glenda Gilmore, and Leslie King-Hammond. The exhibition will tour nationally following its debut at the Mint.
 

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