Double-sided watercolor, with monotype, on soft fibrous paper, circa 1952-55. 660x508 mm; 26x20 inches. Signed in ink, lower left.
Provenance: private collection.
This experimental work on paper is a striking, double-sided work from Romare Bearden's overlooked abstract period of the mid-1950s. Bearden showed a similar group of oil paintings and watercolors at the Barone Gallery in 1955--in particular, this figure echoes the three found in the painting A Walk in Paradise Gardens, oil on canvas, 1955, in the Barnett-Aden Collection of Robert L. Johnson. Another double-sided watercolor with abstraction on the recto and a figure on the verso was sold at Swann Galleries on March 2, 2004. Fine pp. 25-26.
