Family Dinner

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Family Dinner

Artist Romare Bearden (American, 1911-1988)

Date1968

Dimensions30 1/16 x 39 15/16 in. (76.4 x 101.5 cm)

MediumCollage on masonite

ClassificationDrawings

Credit LinePurchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey

Object number

1992.17

Not on View

Label TextRomare Bearden is recognized as one of this country’s eminent artists. In his art he combined his academic training as a mathematician, his knowledge of music, his studies of 20th-century art, and his personal experiences of life in the 20th century as an African American man. He was visually inspired by Cubism and the brilliant colors of Matisse’s cut-out compositions, and at the same time emotionally tied to the segregated life in which he grew up. Blending such disparate influences, Bearden’s collages focus on the significant rituals of family life. Family Dinner is a masterful assemblage of fragmented and powerfully evocative images. Bits and pieces of color and form are locked together in a pattern that conveys a human experience. Here, as in his other work, Bearden used the distortion of scale and perspective of collage to suggest disparate personal activities and relationships. The unexpected juxtapositions of photographic detail and flat cut-out or torn shapes convey both the physical and the emotional situation of a naturally lively situation. The visual bits and pieces of the collage suggest the sound, motion, and emotion of the activity.Published ReferencesToledo Museum of Art, Annual Report, July 1, 1991 - June 30, 1992, p. 19, repr. (col.).Exhibition History

Toledo Museum of Art, Looks Good on Paper: Masterworks and Favorites, Oct. 10, 2014-Jan. 11, 2015.