Bearden/Picasso: Rhythms and Reverberations

 Mint Museum Uptown
February 11 – May 21, 2023

Admission to Picasso Landscapes: Out of Bounds includes admission to Bearden/Picasso: Rhythms and Reverberations.

Bearden/Picasso: Rhythms and Reverberations examines the impact of Pablo Picasso’s rich artistic practice on Romare Bearden and his work. The exhibition is divided into four sections: Bulls & Bullfights; Music & Rhythm; Doors & Windows; and Line & Color. Each section will feature works by Pablo Picasso and Romare Bearden. 

While various aspects of Bearden’s engagement with Picasso and Cubism have been occasionally explored, this is the first museum exhibition organized to explore the parallels between the artists. The works in the exhibition are drawn from the Mint’s deep holdings of Bearden’s art, as well as from both private and museum collections.

More about the exhibition

Bearden was an ardent scholar of art history who saw many examples of Picasso’s work in New York in the 1940s. Bearden wrote about various aspects of Picasso’s work during that time and also met Picasso in Paris in the 1950s. The influence of Cubism, and of Picasso’s work in particular, can be seen across Bearden’s career, from his early oils and watercolors of the 1940s in which his subjects are presented in abstracted planes of color. In the 1950s, Bearden’s experimentations with pure abstraction and Cubism can be seen at play. Bearden’s later collages reveal the impact of various aspects of Picasso’s work, ranging from the way in which he constructed pictorial space to his use of silhouetted figures and African masks. 

Bearden/Picasso: Rhythms and Reverberations Special Exhibition Hours