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Spring Way

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@ Smithsonian American Art Museum

Description

In July 1963, a month before Martin Luther King’s historic march on Washington, D.C., Bearden and eleven other artists formed a group called Spiral to discuss how they could contribute to the civil rights movement. The moment was cathartic for Bearden, and he began making collages based on memories of black life in Pittsburgh, the rural South, and Harlem. He needed, he said, “to redefine the image of man in terms of the Negro experience.” The bleak and unforgiving sense of place in Spring Way, which was named for an alley near the Pittsburgh boardinghouse owned by Bearden’s grandmother, reflects the strong social conscience that inflected Bearden’s work anew in the 1960s.Modern Masters: Midcentury Abstraction from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2008
Format:
Collage On Paperboard
Rights:
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Henry Ward Ranger through the National Academy of Design
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Record Contributed By

Smithsonian American Art Museum

Record Harvested From

Smithsonian Institution