ROMARE BEARDEN (1911 - 1988) A Portrait of Max: In Sounds, Rhythms, Colors and Silences.
Oil monotype on wove paper, 1985. 711x1067 mm; 28x42 inches. Signed in pencil, upper right.
Provenance: the estate of Max Roach.
Illustrated: Myron Schwartzman, Romare Bearden, His Life and Art, p. 287.
In 1985, Romare Bearden and Myron Schwartzman interviewed Max Roach about the correlation between art and rhythm. Roach described that,"My approach to rhythms ... is the use of space, of silence. It's not that there's necessarily nothing going on. There's always a pulse there. But there are times when there's nothing but the pulse. ... Bearden's paintings are like that. There's the rhythm I see here." When Bearden heard a song by Roach and Clifford Brown while working in Robert Blackburn's printmaking workshop, "I just took a brush and painted the sounds, the color rhythms, and the silences on a big sheet of plastic using a volatile benzine medium which dries within four or five minutes. Then I pressed the paper over it and made this oil-on-paper," referring to the monotype he would then give to Roach. Schwartzman pp. 287-289.
