A Black Art OG is what we call an Original Great! View our collection of OGs here.

“Black Art has always existed. It just hasn’t been looked for in the right places.” ROMARE BEARDEN, visual artist, (September 2, 1911 – March 12, 1988)

Romare Bearden was a twentieth-century Black artist, author, and movement maker, whose paintings and collages have inspired art-lovers around the world for decades. Do you know him?

Bearden was Charlotte, North Carolina, and grew up in Harlem, NYC. He graduated from New York University with a degree in education but became entrenched in the art world soon after. In 1935, he became a cartoonist for the Baltimore Afro-American.

While working days in social service, he created his artwork at night, joining the Art Students League in New York, and later traveling to Paris to attend the University of Paris, also known as the Sorbonne. He also served in the U.S. Army (1942 -1945).

In 1964, Bearden became the first art director of the Harlem Cultural Council, a Black arts advocacy group. He also helped found The Studio Museum in Harlem — home to countless Black Art OGs!

As well as being a prolific artist who created over 2,000 works in his career, Bearden was also an author who wrote three books, A History of African American Artists: From 1792 to the Present, Six Black Masters of American Art, and The Painter’s Mind: A Study of the Relations of Structure and Space in Painting.

He even wrote music recorded by Billy Eckstine and Dizzy Gillespie — two other Black OGs.  While he worked in many mediums, including oil and watercolor painting, he is best known for his bold and striking collages.

Romare Bearden is a true example of a BLACK ART O.G.= ORIGINAL GREAT!

Learn more about many of our cultural art legends, icons, and world changers — the Black O.G.s — here! Including…

Augusta Savage, Sculptor; Zora Neale Hurston, Writer, anthropologist & playwright, filmmaker; Jacob Lawrence, Painter — and more!