?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 20,000 - $ 30,000
ROMARE BEARDEN (1911 - 1988) Two early, untitled collages.
Both various colored papers mounted on thick wove paper, 1958. Both approximately 380x90 mm; 15x3 1/2 inches. Both signed in pencil, lower right. Both initialed and dated in pencil, upper left.
This is a rare pair from the artist's earliest exploration of collage. In the period between 1955 and 1961, Bearden went into a period of inspection and exploration in his work following an emotional breakdown in 1956. He experimented with collage before his early 1960s abstraction and his 1964 collage breakthrough with works such as these. With cut-outs that show both the artist's hand and the influence of Matisse and Calder, Bearden explored the formal qualities of color and compositon. There are very few known examples of this early work, only a small Circus series that has been dated between 1958 and 1961. There were only 2 works included from this period in his recent retrospective, and we could find only 2 other examples from this series in private collections.
