?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 12,000 - $ 18,000
ROMARE BEARDEN (1911 - 1988) Obeah.
Watercolor on wove paper, circa 1984. 762x560 mm; 30x22 inches. Signed in ink, lower left. From the Obeah series.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist; private collection, Connecticut; private collection, Massachusetts (2014), acquired at Swann Galleries on June 10, 2014.
The role of the Obeah is a well-known part of Afro-Caribbean communities and cultural history--typically, a woman who practices spiritual, herbal and mystical healing in her villlage. The Obeah also continues Bearden's depiction of female figures, from the Southern Conjur Woman to Maudell Sleet. Bearden's watercolors embrace ideas of myth, superstition and the unknown that are outside of the Western tradition in a striking and lush expressionism. Garcia pp. 35-36.
