Collage of various printed papers, pencil and watercolor on masonite, mounted to wood panel, 1971. 311x381 mm; 12¼x14⅞ inches. Signed in pencil, upper right.
Provenance Cordier & Ekstrom, Inc., New York (label). Private collection, New York (1972).
Exhibited Romare Bearden, 1970-1980, An Exhibition, Mint Museum, Charlotte, North Carolina, October 12, 1980 - January 4, 1981. Flomenhaft Gallery, New York, January 5 - March 3, 2012 (label).
The Green Room is a wonderful, significant example of Romare Bearden's inventive collage. The artwork is a great evocation of both Bearden's keen experimentation and deep sense of art history. After graduating from New York University in 1935, Bearden embarked on a lifelong personal study of art history, spanning the breadth of Western Art, from the Renaissance to modernism, and many aspects of African and Asian art. Bearden often referred to his compositional approach to painting as a form of Cubism, and he was greatly influenced by Picasso and Braque. Bearden's scholarly interests culminated in his study at the Sorbonne in Paris for nine months in 1950.
One finds art historical references through out The Green Room. Bearden gives his collage a title that references Henri Matisse's Green Room painting of 1916. His beautiful green background creates both a royal and intimate setting, as well as providing a surface tension between the figures and this monochromatic, flattened space. The colored walls recall both the bright colors of Fauvism and the interior domesticity of Dutch Old Masters. Bearden's composition of figures with guitars around a table also references Picasso's 1921 iconic Three Musicians which Bearden knew intimately from MoMA's collection.
This collage also demonstrates Romare Bearden's inventiveness - a restless exploration, an almost continuous reinvention, of his figure compositions. All of Bearden's figures in The Green Room, except the head of the small boy at the lower right, are photocopied figures from his previous collages. Bearden began experimenting with photcopy and photostat in 1964 - creating black and white reproductions of his collages known as "projections". The printing unified the forms and surfaces of his collage in tones of gray and heightened the formal strength of the composition. His important, break-through exhibition Projections at Cordier & Ekstrom in October of 1964 were tonal photostat reproductions of collages. Here the central figure with the watermelon comes from a 1967 collage Melon Season, and the two figures to the right come from his 1964 or 1968 version of the collage Early Morning.
