"The Quilters", watercolor, collage, graphite, signed vertically along lower right edge. See hand-written note by Romare Bearden, along with escalating appraisals over the years (in photos). Romare Bearden was born in Charlotte, North Carolina and spent his youth in Harlem, where his parents were very active in the cultural and artistic movements of New York City. Bearden remembered having artists and musicians in the family home all the time, a presence that carried over into his own adult lifestyle. Bearden enjoyed his only formal art training under George Grosz at the Art Students' League. In the early 1960s he abandoned abstract painting and began constructing collages, for which he is best known. He worked in a studio above the Apollo Theatre in Harlem. In these works, incongruously fragmented figures—composed of various colors, patterns, and textures—populate a flat, vibrant picture plane. Often, the union of disjointed forms signifies Bearden's perennial quest to synthesize the relationship between art and jazz music, another of Bearden's passions. Working in a modernist style, Romare Bearden endeavored to express on canvas and collage the complexities and uniqueness of being a minority in American society. His work is filled with the symbols and myths of the American black experience. Bearden summed up his motivation for it all: "My intention is to reveal through pictorial complexities the life I know." Romare Bearden worked tirelessly to secure equal recognition for African-American artists. Many felt that he did not make it to the top of the art world because he was black, albeit a light-skinned black. Overall Size: 23 1/2 x 27 1/2 in. Sight Size: 14 x 18 in